SBM ITB received the Kaizen award from The Alliance on Business Education and Scholarship for Tomorrow (ABEST21). ABEST21 is an accrediting agency based in Japan. Accreditation by ABEST21 aims to ensure the quality of education and research in business schools, including Business Administration, Technology Management, Information Systems Management, Finance, and others.
The award was handed over at 10:40 Tokyo time or at 08:40 WIB. Present at the award ceremony, ABEST21 President & CEO, Professor Emeritus Dr. ITOH Fumio. Congratulations were also conveyed by, Mr. Yusuke TAKAHASHI, First Secretary / Education Attaché, Embassy of Japan in Indonesia, Danaiping Chetchotsak, PhD. From Khon Kaen University, Thailand. And Mr. Ilker Baybars, Ph.D from Carnegie Mellon University, United States as Vice President of ABEST21.
Mr.Yusuke TAKAHASHI said in his speech, SBM won this award for three reasons, firstly dedication and hard work, secondly teamwork and good spirit, thirdly, strong leadership from the Dean of SBM ITB.
The chairman of the SBM ITB Academic Senate, Gatot, congratulated SBM on receiving the award.
Kaizen is a Japanese word for “improvement”. Receiving this award means that SBM ITB as an organization has been improved to be better according to ABEST21 standards.
This achievement cannot be attained without the determination of every stakeholder of SBM ITB. “By preserving SBM ITB’s values: integrity, strive for excellence, trust, innovation, and harmony, together we have overcome every challenge and maintained our position as the best business school in the region,” said Gatot.
Dean of SBM ITB Utomo Sarjono Putro also thank ABEST21 President, Prof. Fumio Itoh, and all ABEST21 executives and committee for giving such a prestigious award. This award is important for SBM ITB as it gives recognition and approval for its effort to improve itself in the last several years.
Recently, SBM ITB is facing an era where everything is changing so fast. The abundance of information makes everything we knew become obsolete quickly. Rapid technological advancement threatens jobs and the work. We even facing the Covid-19 pandemic that forcing us to behave and interact differently.
Amidst all these uncertainties, vulnerabilities, complexities, and ambiguities, every business and organization is forced to adapt to survive. SBM ITB is not an exception. It forces itself to be better day by day. Therefore, SBM has been transforming into education 4.0, and encouraging ecosystem based learning.
“We believe that the key success to overcome the challenges is by implementing a robust yet adaptive system, enhancing our human capital capability, and collaborating with our stakeholders: academics, communities, government, and industries,” said Sarjono.
Since several years ago, SBM ITB developed SPACE, an academic platform that integrates every academic activity from end to end. By using this platform, SBM ITB can measure its progress and performances efficiently, both at the individual level and organizational level. In turn, it can rearrange its strategies to achieve its targets, aligning them with its mission.
SBM ITB also encourage every member of SBM ITB, students, faculties and staff, to grow and develop themselves. It provides budgets for its faculties and staff for training and certifications. SBM ITB even established a Human Capital Development unit that focused on delivering capacity-building programs to the faculty and staff.
In the effort for enhancing collaboration with our stakeholders, SBM ITB increase budget for research and community service grants every year. “We design exchange programs not only for students but also for faculties and staff as well. Thus, they would be experiencing working in a different environment with people from different backgrounds,” Sarjono added.
It encourages its faculties to have join research, delivering community services, doing projects and delivering consulting services to industries, and many other activities that would broaden their networks and increasing their impacts on our stakeholders. These collaborations are not only taking place at the national level but also at the international level. It established an international relations office that responsible for developing its internationalization programs.
ABEST21 Kaizen allows SBM ITB to measure its progress and achievements and let it know whether it is already on the right track or not. This award is dedicated to every faculty and staff and other civitas academia ITB. However, this award would not be the end of SBM ITB strive for excellence.