Special Munich Seminar
Competence: A key factor in global competition - Challenges for business, politics and academia
Symposium on the occasion of the 60th birthday of Ifo Executive Board member, Meinhard Knoche

On 6 December 2010 a special session of the "Munich Seminar" was held at the Ifo Institute, chaired by Marc Beise, chief editor of the business section of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. At the symposium, held on the occasion of the 60th birthday of Ifo Executive Board member, Meinhard Knoche, a number of experts in the theoretical and practical field of education and personnel policies gave short, pointed presentations on the subject: "Competence: A Key Factor in Global Competition". After words of welcome by Hans-Werner Sinn, President of the Ifo Institute, Ingo Weller, director of the institute for personnel policies in the faculty of business economics at Munich's Ludwig-Maximilian University (LMU), underscored the topicality of his presentation on "specialist and managerial shortages". He discussed the results of a special survey that the Ifo Institute conducted in October 2010 among personnel managers. In the survey, ca. 40% of the participating firms reported a present shortage of skilled labour of at least minor proportions; for 2015 two thirds of survey participants anticipate a "medium level" or even a "severe" shortage of specialists. Ludger Wößmann, head of the Ifo department for Human Capital and Innovation and professor at the LMU, stressed the importance of education for business competitiveness. In his opinion a key factor for both a higher level of performance as well as for better educational opportunity is the competition between educational facilities and when parents are free to choose among schools and when schools are administered autonomously but are still publicly financed. Peter Wacker, chair of the supervisory board of the Wacker Chemie AG stressed that a company must pursue sustainable personnel policies: "A socially minded company is a successful company" especially in the long term. Melanie Piepenschneider, in charge of political education at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, sees her task as assisting future policymakers in thinking strategically and thereby making them fit for their tasks. This needs to be at the beginning of any improvement in competence in the political realm. Meinhard Knoche, Ifo Executive Board member, described the success factors of extra-university research institutions. The framework conditions of a research institute must be designed such that the institute becomes an attractive employer for top researchers. The key areas of focus must be the consistent promotion of the scientific development of the researchers at the institute at all levels, a networking with researchers worldwide and top academic culture of discourse within the institute.