AESE Business School

AESE is a unique school. It is the oldest business school in Portugal. Since its foundation in 1980, mantains a strong leadership position within the national executive education, providing excellent programs inspired by a Christian vision of the person and society. This identity is strengthened with the up to date discussed themes, such as: globalization, innovation, entrepreneurship, corporate responsibility or collaborative leadership, as well as thinking of how this issues may be integrated into the culture and business models of organizations.

All teachers have this sound approach by combining the accurancy, excellence and academic innovation with a strong rooting in the business world, and differentiating the use of the case method as a learning process. Featuring distinctive trait as the fact that a Portuguese root school, AESE also stands out for its international nature, which is realized in association with the IESE Business School and a worldwide network of over 20 business schools. The close collaboration with these academic institutions has enabled AESE create synergies, improve and grow.

Among this group of schools, we shall mention ASM - Angola School of Management, in Luanda. AESE is from the beginning in 2008, responsible for its academic management. His former students are, so far, more than 300 local executives. The AESE/EDP Chair of Ethics in the Company and in Society was set up in 2011, under an Agreement between the two organizations. The Chair is an institutional initiative, within an academic field, related to the development of an area of study. It consists of a research, teaching and dissemination programme on a particular subject matter.

A holistic vision of business requires a synthesis of technical and ethical aspects based on humanist values. We understand ethics as an orientation towards human excellence for both individuals and organizations, particularly businesses, expressed in all spheres of action. We thus propose to research and transmit ethical knowledge that can be effectively integrated into strategic and operational decisions, in administration and management and in the development of organizations in general. This will allow executives to lead organizations with a view to the optimization of, on the one hand, their personal development and the personal development of their employees and other stakeholders and, on the other hand, the response to their valid economic and ecological concerns.

This is a paradigmatic orientation of the research developed by the Chair. It leads to the participation in conferences and other initiatives that highlight trends with an impact on ethics, in the company and in society. Although the first beneficiaries of the activities of the AESE/EDP Chair of Ethics in the Company and in Society are the participants in the School’s Programmes and Company’s employees, one of its main concerns – in response to the wishes of these organizations – is the dissemination of knowledge within society in general. To this end, we promote thematic initiatives open to all who want to attend, as is the case of the Seminars and Conferences on Corporate Ethics.