The 12th BEST Alliance Symposium was held last November 10 as part of the BEST Alliance Consortium signed between three business schools - Seoul National University, Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, and Hitotsubashi ICS. The annual symposium has been hosted alternately by one of the three universities, and this event was held in person in Tokyo, Japan, for the first time in four years post-COVID-19.


Hosted and organized by the secretariat, Hitotsubashi University, eighteen delegates, including the deans of the three universities, faculty members, and staff, were present at the BEST Alliance Symposium. Professor Woojin Kim, the Vice-Dean for Student Affairs, Professor Hongsuk Yang, the Vice-Dean for the MBA program, Professor Sun Hyun Park, and staff member Ji-hye Kim (MBA) participated from Seoul National University.


The symposium commenced with an opening address and welcoming remarks by Dean Emi Osono from Hitotsubashi University, which was followed by welcoming remarks from Professor Woojin Kim, the Vice-Dean for Student Affairs at SNU, and Dean Qiao Liu from Peking University, as well as a briefing on student exchanges between the three universities. Next, participants engaged in a discussion on the co-hosted program for enhanced international exchange and conducted an annual joint research presentation with panels from each country, which was part of the agenda of the joint symposium. Representing SNU, Professor Sun Hyun Park presented a paper titled “Rhetorical Strategies of Disclosing China-related Risks: Evidence from US-listed Chinese Firms” with co-author Professor Yanlong Zhang from Peking University. The 12th symposium ended successfully with the final presentation by Professor Jack Ting-Ju Chiang from Peking University and Satoshi Akutsu from Hitotsubashi University.