The greatest challenge to the sustainability of our current era of globalization comes from within the United States. The United States is at the center of global system. No single country has played a larger role in creating—and then cheerleading for—this era of global capitalism than has the United States. Yet most Americans have come to reject globalization: according to some polls, as few as forty percent of U.S. citizens believe that globalization is a force for good. As developing countries around the world came enthusiastically to embrace globalization, global capitalism began to face its fiercest critics in the developed world. What can be done to restore the legitimacy of global capitalism within a country that, perhaps paradoxically, continues to embrace its national model of capitalism? We must discern the lessons from the parts of the developed world where the backlash is also profound—France, for example—and where it has been more muted—such as Germany. Resolving these challenges has taken on an even greater urgency in the midst of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The American fiscal policy response has reproduced some of the American system’s inherent failings and allowed for the emergence of mass unemployment, while the German fiscal policy response has preserved both the stability of firms and employment patterns. Now more than ever we should examine how to cultivate the legitimacy of the system in the eyes of its citizens.
This teaching note serves as a supplement to “Danone: Changing the Food System?” HBS 520-053.
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Vincent Dessain, a Belgian national, is the Executive Director of the Europe Research Center (ERC). Vincent has extensive management and business education experience. He is a co-author of two books in finance, a book chapter on intercultural management and a co-author of a wide variety of articles in academic journals, case studies and course development notes (cases can be found on https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/ or here). He is a frequent guest speaker invited by academia, business and government to speak on topics in management and education.
Prior to his appointment at the Europe Research Center, he was Senior Director of Corporate Relationships at INSEAD in Fontainebleau and elected as the representative of the INSEAD administration on the School’s Board of Directors. Earlier in his career, Vincent has been active as a management consultant with Booz-Allen & Hamilton in New York and Paris. His field of consulting was international market entry strategies, financial products, strategy, negotiation and implementation of cross border alliances, financial restructuring, mergers and acquisitions. He has also been active as a Foreign Associate with the law firm Shearman & Sterling in New York in Banking and Finance and as an Advisor to the President of the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium.
Vincent speaks five European languages (French, English, German, Dutch and Italian). He holds a law degree from Leuven University (Belgium), a Business Administration degree from Louvain University (Belgium), an MBA from Harvard Business School (Boston, USA), and a PhD in management and communication from Université Paris VIII, France, on corporate social responsibility.