VU Business School Will Explore the Challenges of War for Ukrainian Business
Although there have been a number of academic studies on the impact of crises on the business ecosystem and practical recommendations on how to ensure the sustainability of business processes in times of crisis, there is hardly any research on the management of business in wartime. The Business School of Vilnius University (VU) will try to fill this gap by signing a cooperation agreement with the Lviv Business School of the Catholic University of Ukraine. The researchers will undertake a relatively new area of business research - they will investigate the functioning of Ukrainian business and propose possible forms of business organisation during military conflicts.
According to Dr Birutė Miškinienė, Director of the VU Business School, although the circumstances of the cooperation are determined by dramatic events, the planned joint research is extremely significant.
"In the face of war, we must each do what we do best. As an organisation and a community, we have supported Ukraine from the very beginning, working with our partners to make sure that Ukrainian students receive scholarships and are able to continue their studies. We are sure that the involvement of researchers from the VU Business School is also important. The vitality of the business ecosystem is important for Ukraine's war-torn economy, but there is virtually no objective assessment of the situation and no research on how to sustain it. This is where our researchers will focus their efforts", says Dr B. Miškinienė.
The Catholic University of Ukraine is a private higher education institution operating in Lviv since 2021 with more than 2,000 students in six faculties. The Lviv Business School, which is part of the University, offers Master's degrees in marketing, technology, innovation, HR management, as well as Executive MBAs, training and consultancy for organisations.
The impetus to seek academic partners in Ukraine and to develop research on business management in wartime environments came about when Nataliya Lahotska, a researcher from Ukraine, joined the VU Business School. Fleeing the war with her two minor children, she approached various European universities for work opportunities. The VU Business School responded to her request and employed her, and the university provided her with free accommodation. According to Dr B. Miškinienė, Director of the VU Business School, the first reaction was a human one - to help the family settle in, to provide a safe and supportive environment that would help them to forget, at least for a while, the horrors of the war, and then to look for a way to ensure the continuity of her scientific career. This was achieved with the financial support of the Lithuanian Research Council and the Marius Jakulis Jason Foundation.
"We believe that the opportunity to continue a career interrupted by war is very important for everyone, especially for scientists. We can already see the opportunities it opens up: new academic cooperation networks are forming, unique research opportunities are opening up, which will enrich management competences at the international level, and will help Ukraine to revitalise its business sector more quickly," says Kotryna Stankutė-Jaščemskienė, Head of the Marius Jakulis Jason Foundation.
N. Lahotska has been working as a young researcher for Lithuania's re-joining of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitoring (GEM) study, and she is also working with researchers from the VU Business School to investigate the changes in the behaviour of business organisations in Ukraine during the war. She is currently back in Ukraine collecting data on the situation of Ukrainian businesses and working remotely at the VU Business School.
"Business schools in Ukraine are more oriented towards business practitioners and usually offer postgraduate studies for professionals who have already gained experience. Due to our more practical and consultancy-oriented specialisation, we do not have a strong tradition of business research in Ukraine, so my experience at the VU Business School has been very useful for me as a researcher. The opportunity to be part of the Lithuanian research team in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitoring Survey is worth it alone - I hope that after the war is over, my experience will help Ukraine to join this initiative sooner and monitor its own country's entrepreneurship index," says N. Lahotska about her experience in Lithuania.
Speaking about her research on Ukraine's entrepreneurial ecosystem during wartime, she says that, despite everything, war is one of the forms of human activity and existence, and science cannot ignore it.
"Research during wartime is not only important for gathering facts. It is much more important to preserve them, to evaluate them and to learn the lessons", says the Ukrainian scientist.