A world view of business

Penn State professor provides an international perspective for MBAs

Today’s economy is global in scope. Even if your company isn’t international, your clients, suppliers or competitors are, which will have an effect on your own bottom line.

“Unless you’re aware of these trends, you can’t call yourself a Master of Business Administration,” argues Professor Fariborz Ghadar of Penn State’s Smeal School of Business.

Born in Iran, Ghadar grew up in Ann Arbor and Baton Rouge, but visited his grandmother in Iran every summer. “She didn’t want me getting into trouble, so she sent me to summer school,” he reports with a chuckle. “I repeated all of my schoolwork each summer — in Farsi.”

He studied biomedical and chemical engineering at M.I.T., but ended up as an investment banker. Ghadar’s financial expertise, as well as his bicultural upbringing, led him back to Iran, serving in the late Shah’s finance ministry, first overseeing foreign investment and then as vice minister in charge of exports.

He left Iran during the revolution, when he and his Philly-born wife came to the U.S. He became a professor, ultimately coming to Penn State when they offered him an endowed chair in Global Management, Policies and Planning.

In his current project, which he calls “Global Tectonics,” he asked 500 leaders (senior business executives and government and NGO officials) “what’s keeping you up at night?”

He has distilled their answers into 12 categories [see box]. These are the trends that, he says, “are slowly shifting below the surface, but will transform the world.” 

Judy Weightman