Introduction to Global Business: Understanding the International Environment and Global Business Functions

Gaspar, Julian, Arreola-Risa, Antonio, Bierman, Leonard, Hise, Richard, Kolari, James

Dr. Julian Gaspar is Clinical Professor Emeritus of Finance with Texas A&M University’s Mays Business School. He is currently an adjunct professor of international business with the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., where he teaches international business and international financial management. Dr. Gaspar is former director of Texas A&M University's Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER), where he guided the international expansion of the business school's academic programs, faculty research and outreach programs for thirty years. As the director of one of America's 15 CIBER business schools, Dr. Gaspar infused globalization into the school's business courses through international business course designs, study abroad and exchange programs, and authoring international business (IB) texts. Dr. Gaspar developed and led study abroad programs to China, Europe and India. An international economist by training, he has three decades of expertise in country risk evaluation, project economic and financial analysis, and financial and industrial restructuring of emerging economies. His corporate experience includes work with Bank of America in Tokyo and San Francisco, where he conducted country risk assessment and researched and analyzed debt problems of developing countries. During his tenure as an international economist with the World Bank Group, Dr. Gaspar analyzed investment projects in Asia and designing financial and industrial restructuring programs for Poland and Cyprus. Dr. Gaspar received his Ph.D. in international and monetary economics from Georgetown University, his M.B.A. from Indiana University and his B.S. degree in chemical engineering from the University of Madras, India.

Dr. Antonio Arreola-Risa is a faculty member in the Information and Operations Management Department at Mays Business School, Texas A&M University. For several years he served as the director of the Texas A&M University's Supply Chain Consortium. He received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in operations management from Stanford University. Prior to joining Texas A&M University, he served on the faculty at Monterrey Institute of Technology (ITESM) and the University of Washington. Dr. Arreola-Risa started his professional career as a production and inventory control analyst at a manufacturing firm. His primary research, teaching, and consulting interests are in the following two fields: production-distribution systems with emphasis on enterprise resource planning and supply chain management and service operations with emphasis on health care systems management. Dr. Arreola-Risa has taught undergraduate, master and doctoral courses. He has lectured in executive education programs and has consulted for companies in the U.S. and abroad, including the Boeing Company, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Neiman Marcus and Royal Dutch Shell. Dr. Arreola-Risa is on the CHI St. Joseph Health Board of Directors. His research can be found in such academic journals as Computers & Operations Research, Decision Sciences, European Journal of Operational Research, IIE Transactions, Management Science, Naval Research Logistics and Production and Operations Management. He is the co-author of four books: LINEAR PROGRAMMING: AN INTRODUCTION TO QUANTITATIVE DECISION MAKING; INTRODUCTION TO GLOBAL BUSINESS; INTRODUCTION TO BUSINESS; and DESIGNING SUPPLY CHAINS FOR NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT.

Dr. Leonard Bierman is a professor of management at Texas A&M University. He teaches courses on the political environment of business, labor relations and negotiations, and he also pursues research in these areas. Dr. Bierman is currently working on a research project with colleagues at the University of Missouri and Stanford University, examining labor union organizing in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and today's politically polarized American society. He recently served as speaker of the Texas A&M University Faculty Senate. Earlier in his career, Dr. Bierman held various jobs in the federal government dealing with international business. He was a former top staff member at the U.S. International Trade Commission. He also held a sub-cabinet position during the Bush Administration, dealing with international labor affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor. Dr. Bierman also served as the U.S. academic representative on the NAFTA Labor Commission's Academic Advisory Board.

Richard T. Hise is Professor Emeritus of Marketing, Texas A&M University, where his teaching and research interests are international marketing, product planning and development, management of technology, marketing strategy, and logistics/supply chain. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Global Marketing, Sloan MIT Management Review, Business Horizons, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Research-Technology Management, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and Marketing Management. He has authored or co-authored eight marketing or business textbooks.A consultant to major companies such as Hotel Sofitel, Lockheed Martin, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Harley Davidson, and Fleetwood Enterprises, he has given executive development programs for Hoffman-LaRoche, Halliburton, Amoco, and the Kuwait Institute of Banking Studies. Dr. Hise has worked and traveled in England, France, Monaco, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, and Liechtenstein as leader/instructor of study abroad courses. He taught seminars in Ecuador and Kuwait and semester-length courses at the Universidad de las Americas, Puebla, Mexico, and the Grande Ecole, Tours, France. His biography is included in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in International Business Education and Research, and Who's Who in Finance and Business. He has a BA from Gettysburg College (major in economics, minors in business, political science, and Spanish) and MBA and DBA degrees from the University of Maryland.

Dr. James Kolari has taught financial markets and institutions at Texas A&M University and been active in international education, consulting and executive education. In 1994 he was awarded the J.P. Morgan Chase Professorship in Finance in the Mays Business School at Texas A&M. Prior to this, he was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Helsinki and worked with the Bank of Finland. Dr. Kolari has served as a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and as a faculty fellow with the Mortgage Bankers Association of America. In addition, he has consulted for the U.S. Small Business Administration, American Bankers Association, Independent Bankers Association of America and the U.S. Information Agency. In recent years he has worked as a senior research fellow at the Swedish School of Business and Economics (Hanken) in Finland. Previously, he served as an advisor on the North American Free Trade Agreement for the State of Texas; he was a consultant for the Mexican government in financing technology; and he served as a member of the Academy of Sciences for Higher Education in Russia. With more than 100 articles in refereed journals, numerous other papers and monographs, more than 20 co-authored books and more than 100 competitive papers presented at academic conferences, he ranks in the top 1-2% of finance scholars in the U.S., according to recent guides of research productivity among finance professors. His papers have appeared in such journals as the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Business, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Journal of Financial Research, Journal of Banking and Finance, Real Estate Economics, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control and the Scandinavian Journal of Economics. His work has been published in Russian, Finnish, Dutch, Italian and Chinese.