Sixth Summer School in Business Psychology
The School was organized by the teaching team of the Russian-British master’s programme ‘Psychology in Business’. The participants not only improved their professional competencies, but applied their knowledge and skills in order to help develop the children’s health resort where the classes took place.
The first five schools took place in Great Britain, in many ways the homeland of business psychology. This year, however, the business psychologists came to Crimea. Today it is unique location, where, due to such factors as entering the Russian legal framework and the international sanctions, the problems of organizational change have been exposed. For example, as a result of economic sanctions, many companies have to change, make a stronger effort in order to attract clients, develop new services, and find new sources of profit. This pushes the company managers to focus on analyzing their company, its strong and weak facets and potential areas for future development. As experience confirms, it’s difficult for many companies to do this without the help of experts such as consultants in management, organization development, branding, and marketing.
That’s why the School aimed at the participants’ professional development and focused on providing them with skills for managerial consulting, organizational change analysis, and independent implementation of research projects.
The school took place at the Bobrov Children’s Health Resort in Alupka, which specializes in orthopedic help. Currently the resort is undergoing serious changes related to management optimization, changes in the services offered and the customer base. That’s why the main result of the School’s activities was a Development Project for the Bobrov Resort, developed as a volunteering initiative. The resort administration and staff were deeply appreciative of the results of this consulting project.
The School instructors included many globally-recognized experts, such as Stephen Armstrong, professor of innovation at the University of Toronto (Canada), management consultant and business psychologist. Since 2014, Stephen Armstrong has been academic advisor of the ‘Psychology in Business’ master’s programme and member of the editorial board of the HSE ‘Organizational Psychology’ journal.
The seventh School is also planned to be held in Crimea next year.
Professor Natalia Ivanova