Peter B. Gustavson School of Business

Mary Yoko Brannen is Professor of International Business and holds the Jarislowsky East Asia (Japan) Chair at the Centre for Asia Pacific Initiatives (CAPI) at the University of Victoria. She also is Visiting Professor of Strategy and Management at INSEAD. She received her MBA with emphasis in International Business and PhD in Organizational Behavior with a minor in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and a BA from the University of California at Berkeley. She has taught at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, the Haas Business School at the University of California at Berkeley, Smith College, and Stanford University in the United States; the Keio Business School as well as the School of Economics at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan, and Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and currently at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France. Professor Brannen’s expertise in multinational affairs is evident in her research, consulting, teaching, and personal background. Born and raised in Japan, having studied in France and Spain, and having worked as a cross-cultural consultant for over 20 years to various Fortune 100 companies, she brings a multi-faceted, deep knowledge of today’s complex cultural business environment. She is a founding director of the Institute for Global Learning and Innovation.

Professor Brannen’s consulting specialty is in helping multinational firms realize their global strategic initiatives by aligning, integrating and deploying critical organizational resources. Her consulting clients include Agilent Technologies, Applied Materials, Advanced Micro Devices, Cisco Systems, Dupont Photomask, Ford Motor Company, Fuji/Xerox, Fujitsu, Hewlett/ Packard, Honeywell, Intel, Marubeni Corporation, Motorola, Proctor and Gamble, Schlumberger, Sony Japan, Sony Electronics, Sony USA, Spansion, Ltd., Toppan Ltd., Toyota Motor Company, UNESCO, and the Walt Disney Company.

Professor Brannen regularly teaches on the topics of Integration in International JVs, M&As, Global Teams, Knowledge-Sharing Across Distance and Differentiated Contexts, and   Collaboration in Cross-Border Partnerships and Strategic Alliances. Her current projects include: ongoing research on knowledge sharing across distance and differentiated contexts and directing a global research project focusing on biculturals and people of mixed cultural origins as the new workplace demographic—identifying types of biculturals, personal case histories, and designing and conducting a larger quantitative study to determine key attributes of people with mixed cultural identities as cultural brokers (bridges) in multinational companies.

Professor Brannen is deputy editor of the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS) and serves on the editorial board of several international management journals including the Global Strategy Journal (GSJ), Management International Review (MIR), International Journal of Business Innovation and Research (IJIR), the International Journal of Cross-Cultural Research (IJCCR), and Organizational Research Methods (ORM). She has published articles in AMR, AMJ, JIBS, JMI, Semiotica, and several anthropology journals. She has won several awards for her work including the Breaking the Frames Award from the Journal of Management Inquiry, the Dean’s Research Award, and two Distinguished Teacher’s Awards.

She is bilingual in Japanese and English, competent in French and Spanish, and has a working knowledge of Mandarin. Her non-academic interests include, horseback riding (dressage), skiing, Japanese calligraphy, meditation and Zen Buddhism.