Center activities

The colloquium on globalization of business education was held October 4- 6, 2007 at the IESE campus in Barcelona. The key organizer of the event was Pankaj Ghemawat, IESE professor and chair of the Anselmo Rubiralta Center for Globalization and Strategy. During the sessions, participants analyzed and debated the challenges faced by business schools in the wake of economic globalization. One of the first topics under discussion was how to incorporate our knowledge of globalization into the syllabus of both MBA and executive education programs. Among those who attended the conference were 40 representatives of leading business schools, including Ann Von Glinow, from Florida International University, and Sourmita Dutta, from INSEAD Business School, both of whom chaired sessions.

Research Projects



The offshoring Research network project is embarking on its second phase. Following its first report on the offshoring of services in Spain, the IESE team now hopes to explore the subject in greater depth and breadth. If you wish, you can participate in the study by completing a questionnaire whose main goal is to identify the key factors involved in offshoring decisions, and their risks and outcomes. If you are an executive contributing toward your company’s strategy, and would like to participate, please contact ftorres@iese.edu.

The Center for Globalization and Strategy of IESE and KPMG has started a new research project on Strategic Alliances and Joint Ventures. The project is coled by Prof. Africa Ariño and Prof. Pinar Ozcan, both of IESE Business School. One of the aspects of strategic alliances that is still underexplored is the pre-operational stage. While it is relatively easy to observe the development of an alliance and the changes it goes through over time, it is much more difficult to lay out the decision-making process that leads to the operationalization of the alliance. Understanding this pre-alliance process is important because the choices made at that stage are arguably among the most critical in obtaining maximum benefits at the later stages.

This study therefore focuses on the preoperational stage of strategic alliances in order to identify:

• Key criteria in the pre-alliance decisionmaking process.
  
  
• Key factors for success in global strategic alliances.

Latest Publications.



Pankaj Ghemawat has just published his new book, "Redefining Global Strategy" a work which breaks away from the widespread myth that globalization has created a flat and interconnected world. His book argues that borders are still of great importance in the present world, and that as long as businesses continue to ignore this fact they run the risk of encountering problems that could, and should, have been anticipated. Professor Ghemawat also talks about the forces shaping globalization and proposes strategies for succeeding across borders.