Gutenberg School of Business Mainz established at Johannes Gutenberg University

By setting up the Gutenberg School of Business Mainz (GSB Mainz) in September 2020, the Faculty of Law, Management and Economics at Johannes Gutenberg University (JGU) is consolidating its previous activities in the field of extra-occupational management and business further education and bringing the successful achievements of the Mainz EMBA program under a single roof.

The common objective of the part-time Master’s degree courses is to enable participants, in accordance with their current career paths, to develop professionally, to assume management and leadership positions in businesses and public institutions of various sizes, and make decisions on a theoretically sound basis for which they are willing to accept responsibility. The various course formats have been expressly designed to make sure that more than just skills and expertise are imparted. In fact, the objective is to help participants develop individually, make them willing and able to take on responsibility and thus assume accountability for their own decision-making. The target groups of GSB include young professionals, specialists and executives working for commercial enterprises and public institutions, the self-employed, physicians, and freelancers.

Thanks to JGU’s long and successful history of providing business education, GSB has in effect an excellent ready-made reputation and can draw on the university’s many years of expertise in teaching MBA courses. JGU has been offering an Executive Master of Business Administration degree program since 2001, making it one of the longest-established providers of extra-occupational MBA training in Germany. The formation of GSB Mainz provides the opportunity to extend the range of courses offered in management and business further education, which have so far been aimed primarily at executives in the more advanced stages of their careers, to other target groups. To this end, GSB Mainz will begin by offering an MBA program for young professionals, in addition to the EMBA program, from summer semester 2021. It is also planned to introduce other teaching formats, such as topic-oriented further education seminars and workshops.

The courses implemented by GSB will continue to be subject to all the quality criteria that to date have been applied to continuing education management programs for professionals and executives. The high quality of the training provided at GSB Mainz is in part attributable to the excellence of the content and methodology of the courses offered at the higher education Master’s level. GSB Mainz is also able to satisfy the special requirements for extra-occupational further education in management by consistently combining top-quality teaching with current and future-oriented practically relevant aspects. In order to achieve this, GSB Mainz only engages teaching staff who have recognized professional reputations and executive teaching expertise. The personal suitability of applicants who apply for admission to the various programs is verified by means of an individual review process. This procedure is also used to put together groups of course participants with as many different professional backgrounds and levels of professional experience as possible. This results in the development of interaction of the participants with one another and with the lecturers, guaranteeing the widest possible transfer of knowledge and exchange of experiences. This professional diversity and personal interaction are essential for the participants’ personal development as well as knowledge transfer.

“Thanks to the establishment of GSB Mainz, we can now offer future decision-makers in the corporate and public sectors tuition in how to undertake management tasks and assume responsibilities for which they will accept accountability. This will be a form of tuition tailored to their needs and will pay particular attention to ensuring they develop the necessary sense of probity when it comes to their relationships with employees, their employer, society and the environment,” points out Professor Andrej Gill, joint-head of GSB Mainz. “In GSB Mainz they will find a reliable partner in the heart of the Rhine-Main region with the capacity to fully address all the demands associated with their exacting professional activities.”