What Is the Future of Globalization?

The responses to the above questions—written by faculty members from business schools in Beijing, London, Berkeley, Lagos, and many more economic centers around the world—provide a portrait of a world in flux, and the challenges for management education in a turbulent financial, political, and social landscape. Click the headlines to read the full article by each professor on Global Network Perspectives.

Americas

No Time to Waste

Juan Antonio Enciso González, Director, MBA in Global Business & Strategy, EGADE Business School, Tecnológico de Monterrey

“We need to remember that changes in a global supply do not come about from one day to the next; it might take years before a company can reconfigure its sourcing, manufacturing process, logistics planning, and so on.”

Strengthening Social Inclusion

Guilherme Casarões, Professor of International Relations at the School of Advertising and Marketing (ESPM) and Fundação Getúlio Vargas (EAESP/FGV)

“As societies become ever more polarized and the risks of great-power conflict rise to unprecedented levels since the end of the Cold War, we have to look closely at the lessons taught by history so as never to forget them.”

Embracing Opportunity

Kristiana Raube, Executive Director of the Institute for Business & Social Impact, Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley

“Taking advantage of interconnected and complex global markets, we can bring together diverse viewpoints and approaches to create strategic business models that will make people around the world more prosperous and self-sufficient, particularly if they have the training and education to compete in a new global economy.”

Alternative and Novel Solutions

Ryan Schill, Carazo Professor of Entrepreneurship and Director of Latin American Center for Entrepreneurs, INCAE Business School

“Perhaps this new necessary reliance on technological versions of interconnectedness will actually hasten development and economic advancement in ways that would not have otherwise been possible.”

Dramatic Changes

Danielle van Jaarsveld E.D.MacPhee Chair in Management, Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia

“​Another significant challenge is how to develop a workforce with a productive mix of employment relationships (e.g., temporary, independent contractor, full-time) that can meet the needs of the organization while at the same time remaining flexible enough to adjust to market changes and disruptive technology.”

Locals Versus Cosmopolitans

Robert J. Shiller, Sterling Professor of Economics, Department of Economics and Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, and Professor of Finance and Fellow at the International Center for Finance, Yale School of Management

“The world today is increasingly polarized into locals versus cosmopolitans. My concerns about our college and graduate school education today is that we are further developing a sense of cosmopolitan community for some people, excluding others.”

Asia and Pacific Islands

Growing Pains

Jamil Paolo S. Francisco, Director of the AIM Rizalino S. Navarro Policy Center for Competitiveness, Asian Institute of Management

“The success of ASEAN integration lies on continuing to maximize the gains of international trade and finance while ensuring that the rapid development that the region has been known for remains inclusive.”

Cross-Cultural Engagement

Zhiwen Yin, Associate Professor, Department of Management Science, School of Management, Fudan University

“China is one of the main beneficiaries of globalization. Given this, I believe that China is going to further promote the globalization process, and to undertake more international obligations.”

China's Unique Stamp

Guolin Shen, Associate Professor, Fudan University

“It will be the most difficult task of Chinese globalization to define and promote core values that can be accepted and embraced by Chinese people and the world at large.”

The Great Connection

Kazuo Ichijo, Dean and Professor, Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy, Hitotsubashi University

“We educate our students so that they will be a bridge between two confronting concepts such as East and West, Large and Small, Global and Local, Old and New, Practice and Theory, Cooperation and Competition, and Business and Society without denouncing or ignoring the other in the age of Great Connection.”

The Localization Parallel​

Jin Suk Park, Assistant Professor, Hitotsubashi University ICS

“The globalization of one country’s product is the start of localization in a regional market; then the localized product will be sold globally.”

Empowering Multicultural Teams

Tish Robinson, Associate Professor, Organizational Behavior and Methodology, Hitotsubashi University, Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy

“Our MBA program represents more than 20 nationalities, and team coaching, cross-cultural conflict mediation, and facilitation skills have proved effective in empowering diverse teams in our various team projects.”

The Global Value Chain

Edwin L.-C. Lai Professor of Economics, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

“Developing countries such as China—especially in the early stage of China’s reform in the 1980s and ’90s—benefit a lot from participating in the global value chain.”

Integration and Competitiveness

Rupa Chanda, RBI Chair Professor in Economics, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

“Although India is less integrated than many other countries in the region and thus may not be as adversely affected by de-globalization as others, it still needs an open global economic order in terms of movement of goods, capital, technology, ideas, and people to sustain and improve its growth prospects.”

Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Bernard Yeung, Dean and Stephen Riady Distinguished Professor in Finance and Strategic Management, NUS Business School

“A recent government report, compiled by a panel of ministers and industry representatives, set out a vision of Singapore’s place in the future economy. It sets out the state’s role as being to expand market connectivity, investing in national capabilities, and enabling the scale and scope of their applications and collaborations with other economies.”

Turning Inward

Majid Ghorbani, Assistant Professor, School of Business, Renmin University of China

“The forces resistant to globalization can only change the former converging nature of this phenomenon to divergence and more multipolarity.”

Innovation and Regulation

Harryadin Mahardika, Director of Master of Management (MBA) Program, University of Indonesia Faculty of Economics

“As more disruptive innovations continue to enter the market, regulators should quickly offer solutions to address structural socioeconomic changes that affect large numbers of people.”

Europe, Middle East, and Africa

Disruptive Technologies

Guillermo Baquero, Associate Professor and Faculty Lead of the Master's in Management Program, ESMT Berlin

“The risk for Germany remains the continued reliance on its traditional manufacturing sector, given the increasing competitive pressure from manufacturing industries in emerging economies.”

Truly Differentiated Products

Jeremy Ghez, Professor of Economics and International Affairs, HEC Paris

“T​ake European entrepreneurs: in a connected yet fragmented world, it will be up to them to truly leverage the ‘made in Europe’ label by considering what makes their know-how and their products truly unique on the world stage.”

Winners and Losers

Gayle Allard, Professor of Economics, IE Business School

“Governments have the tools: unemployment benefits, relocation assistance, retraining, subsidies to low-wage jobs, tax systems that reduce inequality.”

A New Phase

Stéphane Girod, Professor Of Strategy And International Business, IMD

“Collectively, the world is three times richer than it was in 1990, but there have been a lot of losers in globalization. Going forward, it’s all going to depend on how we deal with those growing inequalities, in the Western world in particular.”

Bridging the Gaps

Erin Meyer, Senior Affiliate Professor, Organisational Behaviour, INSEAD

“Unless you know how to decode other cultures and bridge cultural gaps, you are vulnerable to inefficiency, with teams unable to work together and deals that fall apart.”

Constraints on Growth

Jean Dermine, Professor of Banking and Finance, INSEAD

“If hundreds of million of jobs have been created in emerging markets in the past thirty years, one cannot deny that, in OECD countries, part of the population, mostly unqualified, have not benefited in terms of growth in real income.”

Technology's Progress

Vinika D. Rao, Executive Director, Emerging Markets Institute, INSEAD

“Factors such as diversity of the student base, leading to the creation of international networks; access to a supportive global alumni; a strong base of recruiters from multiple countries; and multiple global campuses become important differentiators.”

Integration and Interconnectedness

Franklin Ngwu, Lecturer, Strategy, Finance and Risk Management, Lagos Business School, Pan-Atlantic University

“The features of Nigeria—a big, oil-producing country with the second-largest economy and highest population in Africa—further implies that the economy is highly linked to the forces of globalization.”

New Thinking

Ogechi Adeola, Department of Marketing, Lagos Business School, Pan-Atlantic University

“Accepting this trend, not fighting it, may be the best path toward expanding technological and scientific knowledge, growing the economy, and promoting cultural development in Nigeria and throughout Africa.”

Beyond Brexit

Veronica Rappoport, Associate Professor, Managerial Economics and Strategy Group, Department of Management, London School of Economics

“We sit at the center of the global city of London, at the heart of a leading social science institution, which gives our graduates both an academic perspective and a real-world context in the social, economic and political environment.”

Open Minds and Borders

Peter Tufano, Dean, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

“While politicians battle over the free flow of trade, we must make sure that students and ideas can move easily across borders. One of the reasons why we were thrilled to join the Global Network earlier this year is because we want to recommit, publicly, to these free flows.”

More Benefit Than Harm

Miriam Erez, Professor of Behavioral Science and Management, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology

“Globalization creates tension between the local and the global, and individuals and organizations are learning to live in this duality—and to maintain their competitive and sustainable advantage in this global competition.”

Exporting Intellectual Property

Mark Pagell, UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School

“A local supply chain is more agile, easier to control, has a smaller footprint, and is not much more expensive than a global one; hence, in the future, goods production is bound to be more localized.”

A Recovering European Union

John Cassidy, Assistant Professor of International Business, UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business

“Ireland has received a lot of political support from the U.K. with a similar Washington consensus free trade philosophy, yet the union has been dominated by Germany and France. The absence of the U.K. may over time dilute our leverage.”

The Leadership Deficit

Horman Chitonge, Associate Professor of African Studies, Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town

“If there is one area where the global leadership deficit is more apparent, it is around the politics of global climate change.”

Open Versus Closed

John Luiz, Professor, University of cape town Graduate School of Business

“African countries have often been at the receiving end of the nasty consequences of globalization, but at the same time, it is the opportunities within the global economy that will provide them with the ability to grow into middle- and high-income status.”

Engaging Positively

Joshua Yindenaba Abor, Professor of Finance and Dean; Elikplimi Komla Agbloyor, Lecturer in Finance; Agyapomaa Gyeke-Dako, Lecturer; Gordon Abekah-Nkrumah, Senior Lecturer, Public Administration and Health Services Management, University of Ghana Business School

“There will be the need to strengthen institutions, develop stronger financial markets, promote tighter and smarter economic integration, and, most important, develop a core cadre of human capital with global perspectives.”