Internships, crossing the views of stakeholders

Details

Supervisors

Lejeune, Christophe

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] en ingénieur de gestion

Abstract

Internship is an old concept, which is taking shape based on positive impact on learnings through immersion of students in workplaces. As part of continuous improvement, an analysis on how to maximise the outcome for all parties involved is proposed. This thesis will review the goals, success factors, challenges and strategies for all parties in the first part and discussion and reflexion both based on experience and learnings in the second part. To maximise the outcomes of the internship, we have first to understand the goals and objectives of such programs. And the objectives are 3D, the academic institution has its own such as the student and the employer. To articulate those objectives, we need to analyse them at a semantic level, to understand the complex interaction and opposition between each goals of every party. In the first part of this thesis, we will place the goals and difficulties on the balance. It is an illusion that an internship will have no challenges. There are as many difficulties as there are internships. Identifying a difficulty is the first move to overcome it and therefore this is a crucial point in our analysis. It is by taking into account difficulties that we will build a robust strategy. We will then review four chosen strategies that cover different difficulties of internships. They will have different impact on the internship structure but also for all three major stakeholders. In the second part, we will underline action points and recommendations for universities, companies and students, build on the literature, the experience of an internship and the testimonies of other students. After general recommendations for the different parties, we will stress three areas of action that the Louvain School of Management could apply to improve the International Business internship program.