On 24 August 2009, Professor Timothy W. Tong, President of PolyU attended a dinner which was the climax of a seminar that formed part of an EMBA (Executive Master of Business Administration) study tour.

The seminar, themed Managing Against the Wind, held on the same day, was organized by the Graduate School of Business for students of the Mainland China EMBA programme who were in Hong Kong on a study tour.

Leading the seminar were Mr Andrew Tsui and Ms Mina Hsu who shared with the over 40 executives their findings and analysis of in-depth interviews that they had conducted with 12 CEOs from different industries from May to July 2009. The participants thus had an overview of the reflections of senior executives in the region on how the recent financial crisis has brought a renewed focus on discipline, accountability and sustainability.

Mr Tsui, Chairman of Korn/Ferry International (HK), is a headhunter and Ms Hsu is a brand consultant who runs her own business.

Dr Steven Wang and Dr Wei Li of the School of Accounting and Finance won the Best Paper Award at the China Accounting and Finance Review International Symposium 2009. Their paper was entitled "Short-selling and Floating Constraints and Cross-listed Stock Prices". The award was announced at the Symposium dinner on 27 June 2009 at Nanjing. The award carries a certificate and a cash prize of RMB 2,500.

A novel feature of this year's Induction Programme for freshmen entering the School of Accounting and Finance was that it incorporated activities that sought to contribute to the students' development of English communication, business and interpersonal skills through social events and team building exercises as well as visits to various financial and legal institutions.

The Induction Programme, organized and run by 7 AIESEC interns, spanned the period 19 to 22 August 2009. The climax of the Induction Programme was a dinner with the staff and interns to which the freshmen were invited together with their parents.

AIESEC is the acronym, in French, for Association Internationale des Etudiants en Sciences Economiques et Commerciales which translates in English to the International Association for Business and Finance Students. AIESEC is a student organization active in 1,700 universities across 107 countries and territories. It aims at fostering the development of young people through international internships as well as realization of leadership and other potential.

Dr Robert Wright of the Department of Management and Marketing walked off with 2 awards at the American Academy of Management Conference from 7 to 11 August 2009 in Chicago, USA. The first was an award from SAGE publications; he collected the SAGE 2008 Best Reviewer of the Year Award for the journal Organizational Research Methods. He is the first member of the PolyU staff to win the award.

The second award was also for his services as a reviewer, this time from the Managerial & Organizational Cognition (MOC) Division of the American Academy of Management. He received the MOC Division's 2009 Outstanding Reviewer Award.