Chryssa Sharp is an Associate Professor of International Business in the Robert W. Plaster School of Business and Entrepreneurship at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri. She earned a PhD in Management from the University of Calgary in Canada and an MBA in International Management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management. Dr. Sharp’s industry experiences encompass aspects of marketing, strategic planning, and cross-cultural communications. She has also been involved with developing programs to support small business exporting.

Historical knowledge plays an important role in the international business field. Ironically, as programs in the humanities are forced to justify their relevance to administrators, elected officials, and the general public, we, as a society, are in need of those fields’ contributions to creating the desired “global citizen.”

Discussing globalization and international business in conjunction with other disciplines is particularly fitting. As “globalization” is defined by interdependence and integration. International business, my speciality, is interdisciplinary within the business fields. It incorporates elements of all the functional areas: accounting, marketing, finance, and management. It also intersects with the humanities at points. When talking about elements of international business, most people can recognize the need to recognize and understand cultural differences if one is going to engage in successful cross-border business transactions. For this reason, international business draws upon sociology, anthropology, and religious studies.

The particular focus of this post, though, is the importance that historical knowledge plays in the international business field and how I incorporate history into an introductory course on international business, a course that all business majors at my university must take. As the world grows more interdependent and integrated, the discipline specific silos which often exist in higher education appear to be growing stronger.

A standard approach to teaching international business involves placing business activities within a broader environment and discussing how that environment becomes more complex as one crosses borders. The ideologies which influence economic and political systems will vary from one country to another. The legal and regulatory structures are driven by both cultural values and the governing ideologies. There are also issues around what economists and business people refer to as the factors of production: the labor force, other resources (traditionally encapsulated in the term “land”), and capital. The quantity, quality and accessibility of these factors can vary dramatically from country to country and region to region.

History influences everything, with old alliances and animosities, and the attitudes attached to them, reaching deep into international business dynamics. Three of the world’s major economic powers—China, South Korea, and Japan—keep wary eyes on each other, not just as sources of business competition, but from a position of suspicion based on previous acts of aggression by the Japanese against both China and South Korea, and the role of China in the Korean War of the early 1950’s. Sakong Mok, a Visiting Scholar at the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry, a Japanese based think tank, noted in 2012 that, “[it would be] wise for the new administration of both countries to deal with the diplomatic frictions such as territorial and historical issues to avoid future adverse effects on their economies.” Indeed, while cooperation and collaboration between Japanese and South Korean companies has grown dramatically in the past decade, there are still underpinnings of discomfort in working with former enemies.

The 25^th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall this past November provided an opportunity to highlight the ongoing effects of what was once East and West Germany. I was reminded that what still feels somewhat like a current event to me, is, in fact, history to my students (most of whom were born after 1989). When talking about this in class one day, a usually fairly quiet student announced “I didn’t know there used to be two Germanys!” While it is easy to blame lack of quality instruction or lack of attention by the student for this, it just underscores the degree to which many students look at their high school years or their general education requirements as something they “just need to check off.” One of my goals in teaching international business is to underscore how interwoven the threads of their education are. The student later told me that he had started reading about both World War II and the Cold War. The idea that decades of history from the Cold War still influence economic disparities in the eastern and western regions of Germany is news to students, who have only known one Germany.

I also bring history into examples for specific terms. Strategic Trade Policy gets illustrated by Japan’s rebuilding of its economy after World War II and its planned development as an export power. One form of absolute advantage, first proposed by Adam Smith, is acquired advantage. This is when one country outperforms another—in absolute terms (as opposed to comparative advantage) based on the availability of a resource—in this case, a developed one. The fact that the Dutch and Portuguese were once expert traders and explorers is an excellent illustration of acquired advantage. The Dutch were such renowned traders that following the “Closed Country Edict” of 1635—Sakokurei—that led to over 200 years of isolation for Japan, the Japanese allowed a small community of Dutch traders to reside and operate near what is now Nagasaki. Returning to 20^th century examples, I teach the concept of embargoes within the context of U.S. relations with Cuba and Iran.

As the world becomes more complicated, diverse, ambiguous and integrated, it is increasingly important that we teach students “how to learn” and how to connect what often appear to be disparate pieces of information with each other in a manner that will help students truly become “global citizens.” If anything, the need for interdependence and integration of fields of study in higher education is more important than ever, particularly between the humanities, social sciences, and pre-professional programs such as business.