Business schools have, in recent years, made significant commitments to globalize what they teach.  But there is a general sense that achievements in this regard have been inadequate.  For instance, at a recent gathering of more than 100 Deans and Directors-General of Business Schools organized by the European Foundation for Management Development, less than 5% of the participants thought that business schools were doing an adequate job in this regard. Other indicators that point in the same direction include: 

• The limited extent of cases that raise truly cross-border issues—as opposed to simply being set in a country different from the one in which they are taught (particularly true of non-U.S. material outside the U.S.). 
  
  

• Increases in international diversity of students/international immersion programs without a clear specification of content. 
  
  

• Continued questioning by non-internationally-focused researchers in a variety of functional areas of whether international business really has content distinct from that implied by the traditional focus on a single country.
  
  
  

Addressing each of these issues would seem to require more rather than less attention to globalization - as in increasing cross-border integration - and its business implications. Yet this demand seems not to have evoked an appropriate supply-side response. The reasons are various, including as they do, data problems, other disciplinary/ careeristic biases, and possibly (and ironically) exaggerated conceptions of cross-border integration. What is clear that progress has been limited and, in some instances, even negative, e.g., the discontinuation of the survey series sponsored by the Academy of International Business, which was an invaluable resource.


But while there are many academic gatherings that focus on research on globalization, there are very few opportunities for pooling learning and insights about the globalization of business education.  In order to make some progress on these persistent issues, this colloquium on the globalization of business education will cover the following topics:

• Globalization content: a modest proposal
  
  

• The evolving content of MBA curricula
  
  

• Global innovations from executive education programs
  
  

• Improving the links between the globalization of business education and research on globalization and business
  
  

• Company perspectives on career paths: what they are looking for from business schools in the way of globalization
  
  

• Reflections on the way forward, with a focus on faculty-related issues