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GOVERNING THE CORPORATION: New Course at Yale Focuses on “Leadership for Real Life”
Teaching is a central part of the Center’s mission. This is nowhere more evident than to the students who attended the semester long course on corporate governance class at SOM in the fall of 2007, taught by Ira Millstein and Anne Simpson. In addition to Anne's role as Executive Director of the International Corporate Governance Network, she is also a Faculty Fellow at the Center. She and Ira have worked closely over many years through international agencies, such as the World Bank and OECD. Their combined experience provided the class with an opportunity to hear first hand how governance is - and isn't - practiced in markets ranging from the US to Europe, but also around the world in Brazil, China, Russia, South Africa and other emerging markets.
The professors were able to draw upon law, global developments in the capital markets, and ethics to provide second year MBA students with a chance to develop their leadership skills in understanding and solving dilemmas in the boardroom. The class was designed to be interactive and participatory, with students hearing from a wide range of outside experts on class themes, followed by student presentations on case studies that tested their ability to come up with solutions to corporate dilemmas: General Motors and the strategic challenges thrown up by climate change; Cadbury and the ethics of sourcing cocoa from strife torn and poverty stricken West Africa; negotiating the Lenovo-IBM spin-off in China with a communist state as a key player.
“This was not intended as a traditional note-taking class,” Professor Millstein commented. “Real life will not present CEOs and boards with simple problems, capable of simple solutions. The key to effective leadership will be the ability to understand and deal with complexity in global markets. Business life is not lived in silos.” Professor Simpson agrees. “In any business decision at the senior executive and board level, law will matter, financial markets will exert demands, but ultimately business leaders will have to be able to navigate their way guided by their own moral compass.”
Following input from the class and updates to include recent developments, Governing the Corporation wll be further refined over the summer of 2008 in preparation for the fall semester, hen it will be taught again.
Governing the Corporation "is a class you’ll look back on and be glad you took 15 years from now,” reflected one student.
To view the course syllabus, please visit: