University Must Train People Who Have A Real And Positive Impact On Society
The Chairman of CaixaBank, José Ignacio Goirigolzarri, has been in charge of officially opening the ESADE 2021/2022 academic year. “The university must aim to train people who have a real and positive impact on society. This requires that they be mature people, with their own criteria and trained, convinced that the future is not written, but depends on our attitude and behavior”, Goirigolzarri explained in his speech.
During the opening ceremony of the academic year, held this morning at Esade, the president of CaixaBank defended that “a university that aspires to excellence must, in addition to being an academic reference, have a model that provides answers to questions such as the fit of the company in society and the requirements for the sustainability of a project, the management and relationships of human teams and the individual responsibility of the person as part of the company “.
Jaume Guardiola, president of the ESADE Foundation Board of Trustees, explained that the business school has a unique identity “with values that help students to have an entrepreneurial and team vision that encourages competitiveness but also ethics. This combination it is crucial in the face of the new transcendent challenges that we face as humanity, as we live a new revolution in the field of technology and sustainability “.
The general director of Esade, Koldo Echebarria, has vindicated the active role of this faculty with its environment . “We cannot remain on the margins of society and we must adapt teaching knowledge and programs to where the world is going, which is increasingly technological, and is constantly changing.”
In this sense, he added that “technology profoundly affects all areas of knowledge and our educational initiatives must fully reflect this fact. Likewise, in the business world, new technologies are at the center of the new key processes to create and exchanging value. You can no longer talk about operations, decision making, marketing and finance without taking advantage of the opportunities offered by new technologies. “
The importance of values in the future of the university and the company
“Companies require principles and values that should be the reference for daily action. Those that understand these principles and values as restrictions or limits to an autonomously defined strategy, I think they have an enormous danger of incoherence”, has defended Goirigolzarri, who has highlighted the important role played by the University in this whole process. In addition, he added that “intellectual humility is key in times of change like the ones we live in, since it allows you to be open to new ideas and ways of doing things.”
Echebarria has taken advantage of the intervention of Goirigolzarri to claim the importance of the values that are taught in the classrooms, which “must always be transmitted through example” and at the same time “these should be seen as a guide and not as a limiting factor decision making “.
Josep Maria Garrell, rector of the Ramon Llull University, closed the opening ceremony of the Esade course, recalling that this new academic year will continue to be marked by the restrictions and uncertainty caused by the pandemic. “We hope that the advanced vaccination campaign in Spain and the progressive evolution in the rest of the world will allow this to be the course of recovery,” he concluded.
