Developing Exportise: An Irish Perspective

Abstract

JIM BELL, MAURICE MURRAY AND KATE Madden are with the University of Ulster atJordanstown, Northern Ireland. Since 1986 the Northern Ireland Department of Economic Development has sponsored a series of export training programmes focusing on European and North American markets. Initially, these activities were developed in conjunction with AnCo (now FAS), the training agency in the Republic of Ireland and were partially funded by the International Fund for Ireland. In 1989, due to a change in remit, FAS took a decision to target training towards school leavers rather than graduates, thereby suspending their involvement. The DED increased their involvement, however, thus enabling more Northern Irish firms and graduates to benefit from the initiative. This paper focuses on the Export Marketing Training Programme, which aims to develop export competence among small Irish firms while at the same time increasing the stock of exportise by developing future generations of international marketing managers. Following an outline of the salient features of the programmes, discussion centres on an evaluation of their impact on the export performance of participating firms and on benefits derived by young graduates who have been involved in the previous programmes.