Doing Business between Croatia and the Netherlands: A Virtual Teamwork Project – Starting a Business Abroad

In this 8-week Virtual Exchange activity, Business students from Uni Zagreb interact and collaborate with Business students in the Netherlands. Teachers create comparison tasks for their students and follow common learning objectives, e.g., the development of negotiation skills.

The faculty of Organization and Informatics (FOI) from Uni Zagreb (Campus Varaždin), Croatia, and Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS) from The Netherlands are implementing a virtual mobility project. The virtual mobility project title is “Comparing Students’ Consumption Behaviors: A Cross-Cultural Exercise”.

Goals of virtual mobility are: networking with students from other countries, developing of virtual teamwork skills, cross cultural competences, negotiation skills and entrepreneurship skills.

Students attending related courses at AUAS (Intercultural Communication and Cross-Cultural Management) and at FOI (Negotiating in an International Environment) use online communication tools to introduce themselves, compare their student life, exchange experiences, discus similarities and differences between their cultures, customs, traditions and to conduct their virtual trade activities.

Participants are presenting products and services both from Croatia and The Netherlands. Each academic year this activity includes approximately 15 FOI students from Croatia, France and Spain (Erasmus incoming students studying at FOI) and 15 students from Amsterdam. Erasmus incoming students at FOI brought amazing value to the group dynamic. Each team has 4-6 participants. The duration of the project is 6-8 weeks.

At the end of the project, students are reported their reflections related to goal settings, communication experiences, problem solving issues and time management skills.

Find further information here

Prof. Violeta Vidaček Haiš, Ph.D., Prof. Andria Carita, Antonela Čižmešija. mag.inf. and Maja Kućar, mag.psych.