Jason Darrow’s winning entry (Ashridge Business School), titled "How can I be expected to understand all this?", argues that there has been a major change in the complexity of doing business and therefore business education must change to help managers develop new skills. According to Darrow, given the new complexity of global business, business education needs to help future leaders and managers develop the skills to meet contemporary challenges such as geo-political movements and global resource sustainability. Jason receives €6000 for his essay.

Ian Gray, Cranfield School of Management, was the runner up of this year's competition with the essay "The Clash of Cultures: Exploring the impasse between the internet industry and human rights NGOs". Ian receives €2000 for his essay which examines the merits of different responses the technology industry could make to challenges of complicity in human rights abuses in China.

The other shortlisted essays were:

• Kenneth Mitchell, University of Paisley Business School, "New era, New Paradigms"
• Xavier Bossuyt, Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, "Standardisation in clinical laboratory medicine: a challenge and opportunity for innovative stakeholder management"
• Roslyn Layton, Rotterdam School of Management, "Toward a new meaning of CSR: Corporate Shareholder Responsibility"

Many thanks go to our independent judging panel:

• Sir Paul Judge, Benefactor of the Judge Institute, Cambridge University
• Margaret Studer, Vice President, European Human Resources, Cargill
• Odile Quintin, Director General, Directorate General for Education and Culture, European Commission
• Rachel Jackson, Head of Social and Environmental Issues, Association of Chartered Certified Accountants
• Jeanette Purcell, Chief Executive, Association of MBAs
• Eric Cornuel, Director General, EFMD
• Viscount Etienne Davignon, Chair, European Academy of Business in Society and Vice-Chair, Suez-Tractebel

Download the 2006 Press Release.