Certified Evaluation and Accreditation Results forProfessional Graduate Business School

Otaru University of Commerce, Graduate School of Commerce,
Major in Entrepreneurship

Basic Information of the Institution
Ownership: National

Location: Hokkaido, Japan

Accreditation Status
Year of the Review: 2018
Accreditation Status: accredited （Accreditation Period: April.01.2019 – March.31.2024）

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Certified Evaluation and Accreditation Resultsfor Otaru University of Commerce,
Graduate School of Commerce, Major in Entrepreneurship
Otaru University of Commerce, Graduate School of Commerce, Major in
Entrepreneurship (hereafter, MIE), specifies the objectives of “fostering business
innovators who can conceive and develop new business models into entrepreneurial
projects, while cultivating business leaders with the ability to increase their knowledge
and skills in business management and create new business opportunities.” These
objectives have contributed to nurturing people who use a high degree of specializationand depth of knowledge to pursue opportunities and formulate solutions to problems inbusiness, which can be characterized as developing people who will play core roles inbusiness organizations in the future. The objectives also place MIE in a unique position
to support Otaru University of Commerce in building a business development platform
combining the humanities and sciences in collaboration with industries, local
governments and other public-sector organizations, and universities in Hokkaido.
In particular, MIE is expected to contribute to establishing local businessnetworks as the core hub for human resources development for companies in Hokkaido.
In this situation, MIE has devised several effective ways of responding to expectations,
including aggressively introducing educational content focused on regional contribution
in its regular courses and other programs. It is also commendable that as an ongoing
effort, MIE verifies the progress of its vision, strategy, and action plans every five years,and reviews and revises the contents as necessary to reform its curriculum. Moreover,the initiative to invite former graduates to participate as class lecturers in response to thewide-ranging academic orientation of its students is commendable as an effective meansof providing students with more practical education and maintaining good relationships
with its graduates.
In response to globalization of the corporate environment, MIE offers distinctive
courses that include “Special Topics I (Intensive Course at Northwestern University).”In this course, MIE students spend one week at Northwestern University in the UnitedStates with participants from other universities, and attend lectures at the university’sbusiness school, visit several leading companies in the United States for presentations
and Q&A sessions, and complete case study assignments.
The “Intensive Course at Northwestern University” with its highly acclaimed
content has been offered as a regular course (“Topics in Corp. Strategic ManagementH”) at the Institute of Business and Accounting in the Professional Graduate School at
Kwansei Gakuin University since the 2016 academic year. It is commendable that some
aspects of the course show potential for future growth, including expanded
collaboration with other universities.
On the other hand, these distinctive educational initiatives are made possible
largely by the contributions of MIE’s faculty members, thus it is desirable that MIE
build a system that can sustain these initiatives systematically. It is also expected that
MIE will continue its efforts to ensure diversity in the composition of its faculty, such asemploying female and foreign faculty members, though this may not be easily given themany issues to consider, including appropriate staff assignment, work experience, andoverseas experience.