The Fifth Global Conference on International Human Resource Management was held on May 19–21 to celebrate a decade of developments in IHRM, focused on the theme: Looking back over a decade of international HRM: Who knew the world could change so much! Organized by the CIHRS and hosted at the Manhattan Campus of St John’s University, the conference included over eighty scholar attendees from eighteen countries who congregated for presentations, discussions, and networking opportunities. The conference also included a practitioner / academia seminar where experts reflected on changes in their HR careers and what this means for the future of IHRM. The panelists included: Norbert Brömme (head of strategic workforce planning at the United Nations), Cesar Salas (head of HRIS Implementation Americas at A.P. Moller-Maersk), and Melissa Swift (U.S. transformation leader at Mercer).

In addition, at the same conference, the CIHRS also hosted a paper development workshop aimed towards junior academic faculty or doctoral students looking to improve their publishing skills. The workshop included paper development roundtables intended to be developmental conversations among a small group of scholars led by an expert mentor, including CIHRS professors Elaine Farndale, Miguel Olivas-Luján (Penn West), and Maja Vidović (RIT Croatia), along with professors Marion Festing (ESCP Business School), Maral Muratbekova (ESCP Business School), Mila Lazarova (Simon Fraser University), and Vlad Vaiman (California Lutheran University).

The Fifth Global Conference on IHRM featured keynote speakers:

Nancy Alder, Samuel Bronfman Professor Emerita in Management at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada who spoke on: “Not What We Thought We Would Learn: Global Leadership Lessons in a World of Grand Challenges.”

The COVID-19 pandemic and its related economic meltdown and social unrest severely challenged the world. What leadership lessons have we learned? What should we have learned? What questions do global companies, governments, and civil-sector organizations need to ask themselves? As international HRM thought leaders, have we undervalued the role of humility? Have we overemphasized leaders’ impact while markedly underestimating the often-decisive influence of context? Have we embraced the illusion that integrated global economies promote and preserve peace, prosperity, and a stable world order? As a global community, do we truly understand what it means to live in a world in which either everyone wins, or no one wins?

We have proven that we are excellent at learning. But are we equally good at unlearning – at dropping prior approaches and assumptions that no longer work or have proven false? Do we know how to transcend the limiting vocabulary of economic efficiency and least-cost solutions in order to embrace more fundamental values to guide our strategies? How skilled are we at learning from each other, when “the other” differs markedly from us in what they look like, in the language they speak, and in their most cherished beliefs? What role do historic parochialism, ethnocentrism, and exceptionalism continue to play in the twenty-first century? Perhaps most important, how do we maintain a robust and resilient hope that is not merely wishful thinking?

There is no single heroic expert to lead us toward the future we yearn for. We need all our best thinking, reflection, and creativity. Our conversation together will open with observations I’ve made in working with twenty cross-cultural experts from around the world who analyzed and interpreted why some approaches to the pandemic succeeded, while others failed.  Then together, we will ask what leaders, scholars, and organizations need to learn from dealing with the critical, life-threatening, society-encompassing crises and grand challenges that currently confront us? How do leaders build and maintain trust? What kinds of communication are most effective at various stages of a crisis? How does cultural resilience emerge within rapidly changing environments of fear, shifting cultural norms, and profound challenges to core identity and meaning? This keynote is designed to enable all of us—participants and speakers alike–to learn from each other and to begin to discover novel and more successful approaches to tackling grand challenges.

Sheila Puffer, Distinguished Professor, International Business, D'Amore-McKim School of Business who spoke on “Doing Research with Impact in a Chaotic World”.

The conference theme, “Who knew the world could change so much,” resounds far more dramatically than anyone could have imagined just a few short months ago. Talented individuals and sound institutions are desperately needed to provide leadership in a world that has suddenly become even more unimaginably chaotic. This keynote will explore two broad topics relating to people being displaced in massive numbers and global institutions in flux: global talent in the context of immigration and global leadership at the institutional level. First, the contexts of immigrants’ home and host countries and factors facilitating adjustment are key to immigrants making contributions to the economy. This process will be illustrated by research on highly skilled immigrants from the former Soviet Union in the United States as well as the role of informal networks in facilitating that transition. Second, the existential crises of climate change and realignment of the geopolitical order, among others, require global leadership in which business, government, and NGOs find common ground and collaborate. A framework of how businesses can approach collaboration and factors influencing that decision will be provided, with examples from the global supply chain and CSR and sustainability in the international construction industry. Research on factors facilitating the development of global talent and greater institutional collaboration in global governance could well be designed for practical impact to address these enormously challenging issues.

The Leading Beautifully Award was presented by Keynote Speaker: Nancy J. Adler to Chris Brewster at the Conference: