A Franchising Inquiry was held this week, at Griffith University’s South Bank campus in Brisbane.

The mock Inquiry was well attended and held as part of our Franchising course – we even had students who usually study entirely online travel to Brisbane to attend in person.

Online students could also participate via videoconference with people from Brisbane, Melbourne and as far as New Zealand logging-in.

The event ran like a real franchising inquiry, including the formalities and seating arrangement, and we had a combination of franchising students and industry professionals role-playing to represent the different people involved.All the key stakeholders were represented.

A franchising student, who is a franchisor played the role of franchisee advocate and clearly had a good idea of the pet peevs of franchisees.

Another franchising student who works in a franchise corporate office had to pretend she was from the Law Society and pushed for more regulation.

We also had students role-play representatives from a franchisor association and a franchise customer who felt it was important to voice her opinion about fast food, obesity and marketing to children.

Franchise Advisory Centre Director and Griffith University adjunct lecturer Jason Gehrke acted as a Senator and chair of the Inquiry, and was on a panel with two other students acting as politicians. The student politicians did a brilliant job!

They were a little smug and aloof, and weren’t afraid to tell speakers they were out-of-line or not sticking to the terms of reference, and made witnesses feel really uncomfortable which is how it can be in a real inquiry.

After each witness interview Jason took questions from the public gallery (which included franchising students in attendance as well as those attending via videoconference).

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Queensland Regional Director Alan Ducret was also involved, playing himself.

It was such a treat to have Alan participate given the value he added.

Alan provided some really great insight into the types of issues which come to the ACCC, which mainly come from franchisees not franchisors.

He was really impressed by the franchising students’ depth of knowledge and the way they were pushing the witnesses.

He enjoyed being able to speak to people with such enthusiasm for learning and open minds about difficult questions, and thought the franchising students came up with some really novel ideas.

Everyone who participated in the mock Franchising Inquiry did an excellent job!

I was impressed by the quality and richness of discussions and the students all had very refreshing perspectives.

The Inquiry links directly to one of the students’ assessment items and proved to be a very valuable learning experience.

Japanese student, Izumi Nakamichi, said she learnt many points of view and opinions from the witnesses who each took different positions.

It made her realise the importance of a balanced decision, considering all stakeholders and making clear who should take responsibility for any extra cost.

She admits prior to the lecture she only thought about the profit and cost of the franchisor and franchisee, and had no idea how a franchising inquiry really worked.

The role play also gave her some insight about legal issues of franchising and social responsibility of business.

Another student, who is considering franchising his business, Dan Todd, said the mock inquiry provided an excellent example and was thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding. (No one even noticed the class ran over time which says a lot!).

If you’ve been involved in a Franchising Inquiry (real or otherwise) what was your experience like?

Caption: The panel mock 'Parliamentary Committee': Mr Michael Benaradsky MP, Senator Jason Gehrke, Mr Brendan Mulheran, MP. In their real lives Michael is a Franchising Consultant with The Coffee Club and Brendan is National Operations Manager of Battery World. Both are enrolled in the Graduate Certificate in Franchising. And Alan Ducret from the ACCC is in the 'hot seat'.