Benefits to host organizations from participating in internship programs in Botswana

Across the globe internship programs have gained the attention of many tertiary institutions. Many researchers have found the internship programs to be beneficial to the students, tertiary institutions and host organizations. The Faculty of Business at the University of Botswana runs an internship program which attaches students to various organizations for a period of ten weeks. This study presents the views of host organizations on their commitment to continue supporting the internship program and the structure of benefits that they get from it. Closed and open-ended questions were used to collect the views and an exploratory factor analysis was used to analyze the responses. The findings suggest that host organizations benefit in four ways: fulfillment of corporate social responsibility, enhancement of corporate image, gaining of new idea, and cost savings.