The Global Network for Advanced Management celebrated its fifth anniversary on April 19-21 with a series of panel discussions focused on the issues at the heart of the network’s global mission.

Faculty, students, alumni, deans, and directors of the 29 Global Network member schools convened at the Yale School of Management for Business and Management Education in the Age of Contested Globalization, a symposium that confronted pressing issues on the future of globalization and management education and celebrated the many innovations that the Global Network has brought to management education since its formation five years ago. (View complete video of symposium events.)

Yale SOM Dean Edward A. Snyder, the network’s chairman, opened the symposium by hailing the Global Network as an invaluable tool for educating business students and addressing business and societal issues worldwide.

“It’s been a wonderful five years,” Snyder said. “In the next day, we’re going to show the progress we’ve made. Networked learning is here. It’s within the network. Networked inquiry is here. We can get insights faster, that just couldn’t be gotten any other way… Networked education is here.”

One of the symposium’s discussions gave students a platform to share timely new, networked research. “The Future of Globalization Hackathon: Results! Implications for 2017 and Beyond” was the culmination of the Global Network online course “The End of Globalization?” taught by Yale SOM Senior Associate Dean David Bach. In the course, 41 students from 21 Global Network schools have explored the causes and consequences of rising economic nationalism, anti-globalism, and populism. 

Four teams—from the London School of Economics, Seoul National University’s College of Business Administration, Berkeley Haas, and Yale (including students from Yale SOM, Yale Law School, and Yale College)—presented findings, live or via videoconference, and two experts responded and offered their own thoughts: former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry YC ’66 and Michael Warren YC ’90, managing principal of Albright Stonebridge Group.

Kerry, appearing via video conference, praised the students’ work, and noted that he has seen a lack of policy action in remedying the more negative consequences of global capitalism. Still, he said, he’s bullish on the future of globalization: “It may be a rough ride, there may be some very tough moments. But the corporate world is ahead of the political world in understanding what needs to be done.” Warren said that he, too, is bullish on the future of globalization. “Businesses and markets are up for grabs,” he said. “They’re going to have to be much more expert in navigating this environment.”

 The symposium opened with a panel titled “Shocks to Global Management Education: How Should Top Business Schools respond to Limitations on Graduate Mobility?” Moderated by Anjani Jain, senior associate dean at Yale SOM, the panel explored the new hurdles that business school graduates face getting international jobs in an era of resistance to globalization. 

“Business can’t survive and grow unless we assume a flat world,” said Nida Bektas, executive director of the Koç University Graduate School of Business. “Now the world is heading in the opposite direction, and I believe as business schools, our impact makes more sense to bring our students together and to make them aware that they have to fight in a complex and global world for a better future.”

Alessandra Ginante, a graduate of FGV Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo and executive vice president for human resources at Diageo North America, said that while the restrictions to mobility must be addressed, businesses can also approach them through a digitized workforce that allows employees to be based anywhere. “From a business standpoint, we need to de-risk,” she said. “We can’t base the knowledge base we have in one single market. I think the new wave of diversity for companies that are being inclusive is going to be to tap into this potential that is globally available.”

Another panel examined the recent Global Network survey Women in the Global Workforce, which surveyed students and alumni on the obstacles facing women in business. Snyder and Frances McCall Rosenbluth, Damon Wells Professor of Political Science at Yale, led a discussion with deans and directors from various Global Network schools and Yale SOM alumni at the Yale Center Beijing, participating through videoconference.

One of the survey’s key insights, which Snyder called a “catch-22,” is the finding that while women are penalized in their career progression for taking time away from the office to care for others, they are also penalized if they don’t do so. “Firms and society in general expect women to bear disproportionate responsibility for not only childcare but eldercare, so this is a lifetime of obligation,” Rosenbluth said.

“Five Transformations During Business School” featured four deans discussing the key areas of learning growth that they consider crucial to their students’ business school experience. Richard K. Lyons, dean of the Haas School of Business at the  University of California Berkeley, served as moderator, asking his fellow deans, “what we, as deans and directors, are most proud of? If students come in in State A and leave in State B, what are the five transformations you’re most proud of?”

The schools had many goals in common. Among the qualities cited most often were the development of global leaders and critical thinkers; fostering ethical values and a sense of purpose; cultivating a spirit of entrepreneurship; and an embrace of diversity and inclusiveness.

“We have a mission to develop leaders who face challenges and tension, who maybe even take advantage of the challenges and turn them into something positive,” said Bernard Yeung, Dean and Stephen Riady Distinguished Professor at NUS Business School. “The Global Network can play a leadership role to really make some changes…and be a part of the transformation that the world needs.”

In a lunchtime conversation,  Snyder and Neil Shen ’92, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Sequoia Capital, discussed the state of private equity and venture capital investing in China. Shen, who is also a member of the Yale SOM Board of Advisors, shared his insights into investment strategy and the trends in tech startup investing, as well as the “soul-searching” that good investors should undertake when their investment picks are unsuccessful.

A panel discussion titled “Global Network Curriculum Unveiling: Introducing the IBM Corporate Service Corps Raw Case,” examined a new online case produced through a collaboration by the University of Ghana Business School, EGADE Business School, and Yale SOM. Judy Samuelson ’82, executive director of the Business and Society Program at the Aspen Institute, which will use the case in its annual case competition this spring, moderated the discussion. 

Professor James Baron of Yale SOM, commented on the effectiveness of the online “raw” case format. “Each student effectively writes the case,” he said. “There’s an element of commitment that arises from the fact that you’ve chosen how to navigate the case.”

Through the Corporate Service Corps (CSC), IBM sends top performers from 60 countries to work on projects with host organizations around the world. Gina Tesla, director of Corporate Citizenship at IBM, said that CSC is effective as leadership development precisely because participants must solve real problems: “There’s not a magic answer I’m hiding in my pocket.”