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The Pyongyang Business School comprises first and foremost the students, not the school building! To ensure a strong practice orientation and establish close links with potential business partners, the lecturers are, whenever possible, chosen from reputable international companies. In addition, eminent experts from universities and other institutions complement the faculty.

The course participants are generally postgraduate students, i.e. executives from a variety of companies or from the ministries of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The programme more or less comprises a complete business plan cycle and forms the core of a future MBA programme. The main focus is placed on stepping up productivity, increasing competitiveness and developing business strategies for export markets. Courses on specific subjects can also be offered on request. The cycle culminates in an examination with a diploma. Prizes, offered by sponsors, will be awarded to the best students.

In addition, public management courses are offered to officials to capitalise on the experience gained from market reforms in other countries, where capacity-building at different levels has helped create favourable framework conditions for both domestic business and foreign investment and thereby significantly boosted the national economy.

The picture shows Alick Chia during his lecture at the Pyongyang Business School in January 2005.

Alick Chia is a brilliant supply chain management specialist with an outstanding reputation among supply chain management experts in Asia and beyond. He was awarded the prestigious Lewis E. Spangler Award by the International Federation of Purchasing and Materials Management (IFPMM).

Being a professional and specialist in supply chain management in the international arena, he was admitted as a Fellow member to the British Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply, the British Chartered Institute of Marketing, and the British Institute of Logistics and Transportation.

He also serves as Chairman of the Singapore Institute of Purchasing and Materials Management (SIPMM) governing council. The SIPMM issues the monthly Singapore Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) that monitors the status and development of the Singapore manufacturing sector. The PMI gauges changes on the national front on order levels, production, inventory, imports, import prices, supplier delivery and employment levels.

Last but not least, Alick Chia is the Managing Director of SKF Logistics Services Asia and was the driving force in transforming the SKF group’s distribution centre for Asia in Singapore from its manual operations into a high-tech regional hub and making it the best distribution centre among the SKF worldwide distribution centres. In management literature SKF is acclaimed for having successfully countered serious threats by Japanese competitors in past decades thanks to developing its supply chain management to a strategic core competence.

a. Asian Markets of Choice. Rapid development and change, increasing competition and new windows of opportunities. Relevant market entry strategies.

b. The New Europe. Structure of and Trends in European Markets. Mature, declining, growing and changing markets. Opportunities for and limitations in exporting to and importing from Europe. Relevant market entry strategies.

5. New Product Development and Marketing Strategies
New product development is essential for a company to remain competitive in today’s rapidly changing markets.
Marketing plays an important role in new-product development.
Analyses of the selected market segments and the targeted consumer groups are performed, and decisions are made regarding the development of appropriate products. Still, the introduction of new products is extremely risky. New product failures are estimated at up to 80 percent of all new-product launches.

Thus, the seminar gives answers to the following relevant questions:

Why is there such a high failure rate with new products?
What are the major stages in new product development?

• Idea generation
• Idea screening
• Concept development and testing
• Business analysis
• Product development
• Market testing
• Commercialisation
  

6. Advertising and Promotions Management
This seminar aims to give students a very practical and yet theoretically grounded understanding of how advertising and promotion works.
Topics covered include advertising strategy, campaign planning, media planning, creativity, assessing advertising and promotion effectiveness, direct marketing and public relations.
Particular attention is given to cultural issues involved with the use of advertising and promotion in foreign markets.
Taking a holistic view, the course aims to help students make management decisions related to advertising and promotion, and to ensure that such decisions are properly integrated into the firm’s marketing mix.

7. Marketing Research
This seminar focuses on helping managers make better decisions in (export) marketing research.
Designed with the view of how to use various research methods, it explores both quantitative as well as qualitative analytical techniques to better understand the target market.
Students are taken through the entire process of determining the initial marketing problem or opportunitiy, through the process of research design, to the final states of executing and implementing the research.

8. Buyer Behaviour
The objectives of this seminar are to give an appreciation of the social and psychological influences on how (export) markets and managers behave and, thus, allow students to understand and influence behaviour.
It does this by reviewing the influences on behaviour (culture, social class, mass communication) and by showing how these factors are manifested in consumer attitudes, perceptions, and decision-making.

9. Cross-Cultural Management
This seminar’s objective is to equip students with the knowledge and skills which are necessary to interact effectively with members of cultures other than their own, specifically in the context of international business relations.
It addresses relevant topics such as business etiquettes, negotiations with business partners of other cultures etc.

10. New Enterprise Development (Business Plan)
The seminar examines critical issues and practical problems associated with evaluating viability, setting up and managing new business or expansion into new business fields.
It addresses essential elements of business success, the challenges of starting a new business and basics of planning and managing the start-up, the expansion or the diversification.
Particular attention is given to the development of a relevant business plan (e.g. for an existing or new business or for the launch of a new product or for tackling a new export market).

11. Managing Electronic Business
This seminar provides an introduction to the business models of internet-based business organisations. It covers the marketing, distribution and organisation of internet-based services and products; a consideration of case studies of successes and failures in electronic business; payment systems, security, authentication and non-repudiation; management of electronic commerce projects. It shows how DPR Korea-companies can cost-effectively reach foreign customers and market products and services to them by pro-actively using the internet.

12. Organisational Behaviour
The seminar introduces students to the nature of human behaviour at work. It seeks to engage students with multiple perspectives for understanding and managing their own and others’ behaviour within organisations, with a view to developing organisational capability through strengthened internal dynamics. It also provides an introduction into the related Human Resource Development and Management area.

13. Operations Management
This seminar examines the key issues currently facing all service and manufacturing organisations when creating the products and services upon which their success must depend. The main objective is to illustrate the principles involved in effectively creating a value proposition and how the value transformation process is managed in the organisation and across the value chain.

14. Operations and Logistics Strategy
Managing the supply chain has become a key competitive weapon for companies selling both goods and services. The seminar shows that logistics and operations capabilities must be carefully selected and developed to match the overall objectives of the company. It examines that without effective supply chain capabilities, companies operating in either the new economy or in more traditional environments will find it difficult to succeed.

15. Manufacturing Systems Management
Systems thinking is a vital strategy in the international competitiveness of modern manufacturing industry. In this seminar, a manufacturing system is analysed by partitioning, to model its flow of materials and information, and to identify waste and value adding activities. Manufacturing system paradigms are reviewed in the context of their application to different businesses, professional disciplines and functional areas. Simple linear control systems are contrasted with non-linear, long time lag learning systems with multi-input strategies to achieve corporate objectives interacting with multiple performance indices; assumptions for the simplification of complexity for scaling, modelling and simulation. The seminar may incorporate issues of marketing, forecasting, maintenance, modularity, group technology, flexible manufacturing, time to market, clean production, life cycling, bench marking, the control of inventory, production and finance.

16. Strategic Quality Management
This seminar shows how organisations will increasingly need to achieve customer focused sustainable improvements across all aspects of business to maintain their competitive edge. It provides an understanding of the theories, concepts and the basic principles of TQM (Total Quality Management) and its extension into Strategic Quality Management.

17. Legal Issues in International Business
This seminar provides an introduction into international law and practice and focuses on INCOTERMS, contracts, litigation and arbitration, copyright and intellectual property.

18. International Trade Finance
This seminar covers the financial aspects of doing business abroad. It addresses a wide range of relevant topics such as cash payment terms, deferred payment terms, payment securities (letters of credit, bank guarantees, etc.), ECA, export and finance credits including buyer’s and supplier’s credits, escrow accounts, countertrade as well as background information about foreign business partners.

19. Accounting and Financial Management
Introduction of accounting and financial management to non-accountants. The seminar provides an understanding of the main accounting concepts and the practical use of accounting and financial information for decision making and the achievement of business goals.
Apart from equipping participants with a robust introduction to management accounting for manufacturing and service sectors it covers additional elements of general accounting that are addressed as appropriate for the course participants. A condensed review of general accounting principles and objectives, and then a thorough presentation of management accounting objectives and methods as appropriate for SMEs using paper document based systems is an essential part of the seminar.

Specific topics include:

. cost recognition: cost of sales, production costs, allocations, etc.
i. working capital: payables, receivables, debtors, inventory or stock turns, work in progress.
ii. cash accounting: simple budgeting, petty cash, liquidity management.
iii. selected general accounting principles: accruals, depreciation, reserves, provisions.
iv. tailoring accounting reports and processes to a specific business.
This is considered a key step to ensure that simple, robust reports are available to underpin the Business Planning process.

20. Management Decision Making
This seminar examines the importance of quantitative data analysis within the context of management decision making.
It includes statistics and quantitative analysis, management science and operations research.
The topics are approached from an “end-user” perspective – not from a “technical” or professional statistician’s point of view.

21. Management Information Systems
This seminar provides a foundation for understanding information systems in the context of today’s business environment, and to impart those skills for solving a wide range of information based problems.

Exam
At the end of a cycle a exam will be carried out. The examination will focus on drafting a plan for a selected business that includes major aspects such as marketing, human, financial, legal, quality, logistical and other considerations.