The Woman Who Brought Management To Slovenia

PEOPLE WERE AFRAID THAT WORKERS’ LIVES WOULD GET WORSE

Purg says a predominant fear was that management studies would introduce a society where workers would suffer more. “And sometimes they do,” she notes. “The standards for workers in socialist times were better. We were more equal.”

Back then, executives and workers alike could afford houses by the seaside or in the mountains; all could afford to travel frequently. As a student and a child of workers — not executives — Purg visited 17 countries. If she wanted, she could go to Italy to have pizza.

Many were, understandably, fiercely protective of the system. “The workers didn’t understand what we were doing,” she says of IEDC Bled. “But recently, the president of Slovenia was interviewed for a book about our school, and he said it was a different time then. He was against it then because he didn’t know what it was. Today, he said he’s very proud of it.”

And Purg and IEDC Bled’s values are still influenced by their socialist history. Though Purg says that they live in a market economy now, and so it is inevitable that she buys into it, she believes that capital and financial profit are not what managers should aim for.

“Am I a capitalist in the classical meaning of the word, i.e. that capital is the most important driving force in our economy and society? No, I am not,” she says. “For me new factors such as human capital and related technology are the main drivers.”

TRANSLATING BUSINESS INTO SLOVENIAN

In the beginning, Purg named the school IEDC, the International Executive Development Center. It was difficult to convince people that management was important, she says, but executive training was easier to sell. So she emphasized working on relationships between executives and workers.

“I was invited to make a management school, but I was not even allowed to use the word ‘management,’” she says.

In fact, the idea of management was so new, they didn’t have words in Slovenian for many business terms. “We made the first dictionary of business terms, a lot of marketing terms,” Purg says. “In the beginning everything was with English translation, and we didn’t know how to translate business language into my language. It was a big thing.”

Purg says that despite her difficulty convincing Slovenians that a management school was necessary, conversely IEDC Bled had little trouble lining up international assistance. The way she traveled around the world asking for help was seen as courageous. “And coming from Slovenia was an advantage because Slovenia doesn’t want to occupy anybody,” she says.

BECOMING A WORLD PLAYER

Her world travels resulted in much more than finding good professors. She made connections — and she started thinking about how to collaborate. She knew from her own experience how difficult it was to open a business school in the Central and East Europe (CEE) region. It was particularly hard to get accredited.

In an effort to attract the attention of the world to schools in her region, Purg created CEEMAN, the Central and East European Management Development Association. The organization was originally meant to foster management development and education in the CEE region. Today, CEEMAN has grown beyond the CEE region and includes 255 business schools from 55 countries. It offers educational training for the faculty and staff at management development institutions, provides accreditation, hosts conferences, and encourages inter-school cooperation.

Purg was, and still is, CEEMAN’s president, and in 1999 IEDC received CEEMAN International Quality Accreditation. In 2005, the school’s MBA programs were also accredited by AMBA (Association of MBAs).

THE INFLUENCE OF SLOVENIA’S PAST

Today, IEDC Bled offers three MBA programs, and not long ago in 2010 the school launched its first PhD program. In 2015 the first PhD Candidate at IEDC successfully defended his thesis.

Purg’s wish that IEDC Bled would become a destination for professors and students around the world was also met. The school’s alumni network now has 4,791 members from 75 countries. 80% of current students are international, and though most of the administration is Slovenian, professors come from Belgium, Canada, Germany, France, South Africa, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the UK, and the USA.