Tony and his business plan competition team at Hitotsubashi ICS

In March 2010, Hitotsubashi ICS students Pauline Broadway (UK), Tim Bates (Australia), Shimpei Miyagawa (Japan), Takayuki Miyagawa (Japan), and Nick Tanaka (Argentina) actively participated in a symposium on Corporate Social Responsibility, or CSR, organized by visiting scholars from the Peter Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management, USA.

Peter Drucker's Becky Bakkers (USA), Andrew Chen (Taiwan), Caroline Hood (Australia), and Junko Suzuki (Japan) travelled to Japan to experience the country and culture first hand, and conducted this symposium which explored the differences between Western and Eastern styles of CSR, based on case studies on Patagonia, as an example from the West, and Uniqlo, an Eastern example.

Due to the overwhelming success of the symposium in Tokyo, Hitotsubashi ICS's Takayuki Miyagawa and Tim Bates travelled to Los Angeles in August 2010 to follow up on the symposium. This time the group focused on how companies should measure CSR based on a case study on Panasonic Corporation.

These two symposiums created an excellent opportunity for the students to further their knowledge about CSR on an international basis and to strengthen ties between the two business schools. In addition, they served as a platform to build life-long friendships and networks between the students.