President Koichi Tadenuma attends SIGMA meeting at ESADE Business School, Spain
President Koichi Tadenuma, and Vice President Atsushi Yamada (in charge of international affairs), participated in the Societal Impact and Global Management Alliance (SIGMA) meeting on December 2–3, 2019 at ESADE Business School (Sant Cugat campus) in Barcelona, Spain.
SIGMA was established as a university alliance in December 2016. The nine member universities have strong management faculties and MBA courses, and seek to enhance education, research, and cooperative exchanges. Having highly regarded research and education programs, SIGMA aims to enhance and encourage global partnerships.
Approximately 30 representatives from all nine universities, including presidents and vice presidents in charge of international cooperation, exchanged their opinions for further promoting the SIGMA member universities’ pioneering research and education efforts.
Hitotsubashi University, along with other SIGMA member universities, developed an online-based course in 2019. This English course, titled as “Managing the SDGs —— SIGMA Global Active Learning” in Hitotsubashi University, focused on the role of industry in achieving the global sustainable development goals (SDGs). In the first half of the course, students joined webinars given by the lecturers from SIGMA member universities. They subsequently formed groups with students from other universities and created short films to introduce others into companies with good practice in achieving SDGs.
At the meeting, some of the best films were presented to attendees. The university representatives agreed to encourage further research and educational cooperation among the SIGMA member universities.
The following are the member universities of SIGMA, as of December 2019 (* indicates universities that have a student exchange agreement with Hitotsubashi University): Copenhagen Business School (Denmark)*, ESADE Business School (Spain)*, Getulio Vargas Foundation (Brazil), Hitotsubashi University, Paris Dauphine University (France)*, Renmin University of China*, Singapore Management University*, University of St. Gallen
(Switzerland)*,and Vienna University of Economics and Business (Austria)*.
Representatives of nine SIGMA member universities