Dar Basile

The New Era of Business Administration:

Business today is a global undertaking. It is carried out in a wide variety of settings which makes it necessary for successful managers understand and appreciate the implications of diversity in the areas of culture, gender, language, value systems, religion, politics, economics, legislations, and business practices. Today’s brutally competitive environment demands excellence. Effective business education conveys to students the importance of being excellent, professional, and responsible. Furthermore, knowledge is ever changing and the life span of novel ideas and practices is shrinking rapidly, and effective management education keeps up with current dynamic practice.

There has recently been an urgent call for a radical change to the way business is managed in Syria. This can in part be attributed to globalisation and eagerness of Syrian companies to expand across borders, development of the banking sector in Syria, the sudden boom in the construction sector, privatisation and the introduction of new legislations and forms of agreement, for example, BOT contracts, the fierce competition in the marketplace, mergers and acquisitions. Such a change in approach to managing business in Syria requires professionals equipped with top academic knowledge, as well as practical experience and leadership skills. However, initial training at universities does not always provide such in-depth understanding of business.

Dar Basile, which was founded in 2001, realised early on the need for a new type of business education that seeks to apply sound theoretical knowledge in real-life situations. Hence, the Department of “Business Administration” was established in 2006. The MBA programme run at this department has attracted people from a wide range of industrial, commercial, and banking companies operating in Aleppo. Eighteen students were enrolled on the programme in both the first and second academic years. Most of the students were sponsored by their own companies. Some companies enrolled 2-3 of their employees in the first academic year, and a similar number in the second academic year. This expresses validity of the programme and their full realisation of its importance.  Logos of the sponsoring companies are shown below.

In autumn 2008, a twinning agreement was signed between the “Business Administration” Department at Dar Basile and the “ESC Lille” (Ecole Supérieure de Commerce – Lille), which  is one of the leading business schools in France. This is an important breakthrough that is expected to have an enormous impact on our MBA programme, mainly because more teaching resources would be available to us. Prior to signing the twinning agreement, an academic team from Dar Basile visited France to discuss contents of the MBA programme at Dar Basile with people at the “ESC Lille” who ensured adequacy of the programme. The twinning agreement was then signed by H.E. Mgr. Jeanbart (the Greek Catholic Archbishop of Aleppo) during his visit to France in autumn 2008. We are now pleased to declare that from this year forward our MBA degree will be co-signed by our partner University “ESC Lille”.