What is the primary focus of this conference?

The conference is focused on strengthening management scholarship within the Iberoamerican context, with discussions centered around the unique cultural, economic, and political specificities of the region.

Iberoamerican Academy of Management Conference 2027

Name: Iberoamerican Academy of Management Conference 2027
Start: 2027-05-26T00:00:00Z
End: 2027-05-28T00:00:00Z
Location: Mexico City

May 26–28, 2027Mexico City, MexicoIn-person

Registration open

The Iberoamerican Academy of Management Conference is an annual academic event focused on advancing management scholarship within the Iberoamerican context. It serves as a platform for researchers and practitioners to share insights, discuss challenges, and explore opportunities relevant to the region. The conference aims to foster a deeper understanding of management practices and theories through a lens that considers the unique cultural, economic, and social landscapes of Iberoamerican countries. Hosted in Mexico City, MEX, the conference facilitates networking and collaboration among participants from various academic and professional backgrounds. It is designed to strengthen the academic community's capacity to address complex management issues and contribute to the development of robust, regionally-informed management knowledge.

Committees & topics

Topics
The Ibero-American Ecosystem of Family Enterprises · Business Networks and Entrepreneurs in the Ibero-American Contexts · From Research to Action: Translating Management Scholarship into Practice · Sustainability Challenges in Ibero-America · The Relevance of the Human Factor in the Development of a Region

Why it matters

This conference is significant for several reasons, primarily by providing a dedicated forum for scholars to present research that reflects the cultural, economic, and political specificities of Iberoamerican nations. While the event is held in MEX, its focus extends to the broader Iberoamerican region, encouraging a nuanced understanding of management that moves beyond generalized Western models. This regional focus is crucial for developing management strategies and theories that are truly applicable and effective in these diverse contexts.

The gathering of academics and professionals in Mexico City, MEX, underscores the growing importance of localized management research. It allows for the exchange of ideas and methodologies that are tailored to the unique challenges and opportunities present in countries like MEX. By fostering this intellectual exchange, the conference contributes to building a stronger, more relevant body of management knowledge that can inform policy and practice across the region.

How to prepare

For those preparing to engage with the Iberoamerican Academy of Management Conference, a strategic approach to understanding the regional context is paramount. Given the conference's emphasis on Iberoamerican management scholarship, participants should consider how their research or professional insights align with the specific challenges and opportunities prevalent in countries like MEX. This involves moving beyond generic management theories to explore how cultural nuances, historical developments, and current socio-economic conditions shape organizational behavior and leadership in the region.

Effective engagement will also benefit from a thorough understanding of the academic landscape and key research trends within Iberoamerican management studies. Participants might consider how their work contributes to ongoing dialogues about sustainable development, innovation, or corporate governance in the region. Utilizing frameworks such as "Mapping Relationships" or considering "Engagement Strategies" can be beneficial for analyzing complex organizational structures and power dynamics. Furthermore, exploring "Gender Dynamics Across Cultures" could offer valuable insights into workforce management and leadership within Iberoamerican organizations. These approaches will enable a more impactful contribution to the conference's objectives and foster meaningful collaborations.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Mexico

As the host nation, MEX serves as a central point for discussions on Iberoamerican management, showcasing its unique economic and cultural landscape.

Role in topic

MEX plays a pivotal role by hosting the conference in Mexico City, providing a direct context for discussions on management practices within a major Iberoamerican economy. Its experiences in business, governance, and cultural dynamics offer a rich case study for participants.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

The Ibero-American Ecosystem of Family Enterprises

Family-owned firms are the backbone of the Ibero-American economy, accounting for an estimated 75-90% of all businesses across Latin America, Spain, and Portugal, and generating a substantial share of regional GDP and private employment. Their dominance is rooted in the region's post-colonial industrialization, where dynastic groups such as the Brescia, Luksic, Slim, Votorantim, Inditex, and Mendoza groups consolidated diversified holdings during the 20th century, often filling institutional voids left by weak capital markets and volatile state policy. Iberoamerican family enterprises have historically blended kinship-based governance with conglomerate structures, giving them resilience through repeated cycles of inflation, debt crises, and political turnover. Today the ecosystem faces a generational inflection point. Founders from the postwar and post-dictatorship eras are transferring control to second, third, and fourth generations under tighter scrutiny from minority shareholders, ESG investors, and tax authorities. Succession planning, professionalization of boards, family protocols, and the integration of next-generation members trained abroad have become central management concerns, studied extensively by networks such as the STEP Project and IE University's family business center. At the same time, family firms are navigating digital transformation, the rise of family offices, and pressure to formalize philanthropy and impact investment. The academic and policy debate now centers on whether the distinctive socioemotional wealth orientation of Ibero-American family firms is a competitive advantage in long-horizon investment and stakeholder capitalism, or a brake on innovation and capital market deepening. Comparative work between Iberian and Latin American contexts, and between Spanish-speaking and Lusophone traditions, is reshaping how scholars theorize family business beyond Anglo-American models.

Key players

Business Networks and Entrepreneurs in the Ibero-American Contexts

Entrepreneurship in the Ibero-American space has long been shaped by dense, relationship-based business networks—grupos económicos, chambers of commerce, diaspora ties, and cross-Atlantic investment corridors linking the Iberian Peninsula with Latin America. Following the wave of privatizations and trade liberalization in the 1990s, Spanish and Portuguese firms (Telefónica, Santander, BBVA, EDP) expanded aggressively into Latin America, while Latin American 'multilatinas' such as JBS, Bimbo, Cemex, Natura, and Globant began projecting outward, creating bidirectional flows of capital, talent, and managerial practice. These networks have functioned as substitutes for weak formal institutions, channeling trust, information, and financing where public infrastructure for entrepreneurship remained thin. The past decade has seen a parallel rise of a startup ecosystem, catalyzed by accelerators such as Endeavor, Start-Up Chile, Wayra, and Y Combinator's Latin American cohorts, alongside the emergence of unicorns in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina. Venture capital flows peaked in 2021 before contracting sharply, exposing dependence on US and Asian capital and the fragility of local exit markets. Programs such as Spain's ENISA, Portugal's Startup Portugal, and Mexico's INADEM (now discontinued) illustrate divergent state approaches to network-building. Current scholarly debate examines how informal networks, gender dynamics, indigenous entrepreneurship, and migration shape opportunity recognition across the region. Comparative research using GEM (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor) data shows persistent gaps between necessity-driven and opportunity-driven entrepreneurship, and growing interest in how Ibero-American entrepreneurs leverage cultural and linguistic proximity to scale across borders.

Key players

From Research to Action: Translating Management Scholarship into Practice

The gap between rigorous management research and managerial or policy practice has been a long-standing concern in business academia, articulated by scholars from Donald Hambrick's 1994 'What if the Academy Actually Mattered?' to the AACSB and EFMD accreditation push for societal impact. In Ibero-America the challenge is sharpened by structural conditions: most management research is produced in Spanish or Portuguese for regional outlets, while incentive systems increasingly reward publication in English-language journals indexed in Web of Science and Scopus. This creates a tension between local relevance and global visibility, and risks producing scholarship disconnected from the SMEs, cooperatives, public agencies, and family firms that dominate the regional economy. Initiatives such as the Responsible Research in Business and Management (RRBM) network, CLADEA's impact agenda, and the Iberoamerican Academy of Management's own emphasis on phenomenon-driven inquiry have pushed for engaged scholarship, action research, and co-creation with practitioners. Universities in Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia have experimented with knowledge-transfer offices, executive education tied to applied research, and partnerships with development banks such as CAF and the IDB to translate findings into policy. The contemporary debate centers on how to measure impact beyond citation counts, how to design research that is both methodologically rigorous and actionable for managers operating under high uncertainty, and how to ensure that Ibero-American management knowledge contributes to global theory rather than merely importing Anglo-American frameworks. Topics such as open science, replication, and the role of business schools in addressing inequality and informality are central to this conversation.

Key players

Sustainability Challenges in Ibero-America

Ibero-America sits at the center of global sustainability dilemmas. Latin America holds roughly 40% of the world's biodiversity, the Amazon and Cerrado biomes, the lithium triangle, major copper reserves, and significant freshwater resources, while also being highly exposed to climate volatility, deforestation, and commodity-driven environmental degradation. Spain and Portugal, meanwhile, are among the European countries most affected by drought, wildfire, and energy transition pressures under the EU Green Deal and Fit for 55 package. The region thus faces a dual challenge: managing the natural-resource basis of global decarbonization while protecting ecosystems and communities from its extractive consequences. Policy responses have multiplied but remain fragmented. Brazil's renewed environmental enforcement post-2023, Chile's national lithium strategy, Colombia's just-transition agenda, Mexico's contested energy-sector reforms, and Spain's PERTE industrial-policy instruments illustrate divergent national paths. International frameworks—the Escazú Agreement on environmental democracy, the Kunming-Montreal Biodiversity Framework, and Article 6 carbon-market rules under the Paris Agreement—shape but do not determine national choices. Corporate actors face tightening EU disclosure rules (CSRD, CSDDD) with extraterritorial effects on Latin American suppliers in soy, beef, coffee, and minerals. The management research agenda focuses on how firms in resource-dependent economies build legitimate sustainability strategies, the role of indigenous and community stakeholders in governance, greenwashing risks in voluntary carbon markets, and how SMEs—which make up the bulk of regional employment—can finance the transition. The tension between economic development imperatives and environmental commitments remains the defining strategic challenge for Ibero-American business.

Key players

The Relevance of the Human Factor in the Development of a Region

Human capital has emerged as the binding constraint on Ibero-American development. Despite progress in school enrollment and life expectancy over recent decades, the region exhibits persistent gaps in learning outcomes (highlighted by PISA results), high informality (above 50% of employment in much of Latin America), and severe inequality, with several countries among the most unequal in the world. The 2020-2022 pandemic produced one of the deepest learning losses globally and a sharp setback in female labor-force participation, while demographic transitions—aging in Spain, Portugal, and Chile; still-young populations in Central America—create divergent labor-market pressures across the region. Migration has become a defining human-factor issue: intraregional movement (Venezuelan, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Central American flows), south-to-north migration toward the United States and Europe, and the return of Ibero-American diasporas all reshape labor markets, remittance flows, and talent pipelines. At the same time, technological change, AI-driven automation, and the rise of platform work are altering skill demands faster than education systems can respond. Reports from the IDB, CAF, ECLAC, and the OECD consistently identify skills mismatches, weak vocational training, and gender gaps as central bottlenecks. For management scholarship, the human-factor agenda spans talent management in volatile institutional contexts, diversity and inclusion in firms historically structured around elite networks, the future of work in informal economies, and the role of business in human-capital formation through corporate universities and apprenticeships. The debate increasingly frames people not as a cost line but as the central determinant of whether Ibero-America can move beyond commodity dependence into knowledge-intensive growth.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for Iberoamerican Academy of Management Conference 2027.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Federal Court Blocks Trump's Asylum Rules

Argentina Enters Ecuador Activist Case

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Israel Extends Detention of Gaza Activists

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Mapping Relationships

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

Conflict Resolution

The states in play, with the data that shapes their stance

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

By committee

Frequently asked questions

Iberoamerican Academy of Management Conference 2027

May 26–28, 2027Mexico City, MexicoIn-person

Registration open

Committees & topics

Topics
The Ibero-American Ecosystem of Family Enterprises · Business Networks and Entrepreneurs in the Ibero-American Contexts · From Research to Action: Translating Management Scholarship into Practice · Sustainability Challenges in Ibero-America · The Relevance of the Human Factor in the Development of a Region

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 1 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Mexico

As the host nation, MEX serves as a central point for discussions on Iberoamerican management, showcasing its unique economic and cultural landscape.

Role in topic

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

The Ibero-American Ecosystem of Family Enterprises

Key players

Business Networks and Entrepreneurs in the Ibero-American Contexts

Key players

From Research to Action: Translating Management Scholarship into Practice

Key players

Sustainability Challenges in Ibero-America

Key players

The Relevance of the Human Factor in the Development of a Region

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for Iberoamerican Academy of Management Conference 2027.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Federal Court Blocks Trump's Asylum Rules

Argentina Enters Ecuador Activist Case

Israel’s Flotilla Detentions Trigger Cost

Israel Extends Detention of Gaza Activists

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Mapping Relationships

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

Conflict Resolution

The states in play, with the data that shapes their stance

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

By committee

Iberoamerican Academy of Management Conference 2027

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

The Ibero-American Ecosystem of Family Enterprises

Business Networks and Entrepreneurs in the Ibero-American Contexts

From Research to Action: Translating Management Scholarship into Practice

Sustainability Challenges in Ibero-America

The Relevance of the Human Factor in the Development of a Region

Resources

8th EU-Mexico Summit

El Cisne Rojo2.0: El pulso de la geopolítica y las perspectivas económicas

El Cisne Rojo 2.0: El pulso de la geopolítica y las perspectivas económicas

Congreso Mundial de Estudiantes de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales 2026

XIV Congreso Internacional de Ciencia Política

XVII International Meeting of Historians of Mexico

Frequently asked questions

Iberoamerican Academy of Management Conference 2027

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

The Ibero-American Ecosystem of Family Enterprises

Business Networks and Entrepreneurs in the Ibero-American Contexts

From Research to Action: Translating Management Scholarship into Practice

Sustainability Challenges in Ibero-America

The Relevance of the Human Factor in the Development of a Region

Resources

8th EU-Mexico Summit

El Cisne Rojo2.0: El pulso de la geopolítica y las perspectivas económicas

El Cisne Rojo 2.0: El pulso de la geopolítica y las perspectivas económicas

Congreso Mundial de Estudiantes de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales 2026

XIV Congreso Internacional de Ciencia Política

XVII International Meeting of Historians of Mexico

Frequently asked questions

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

Related conferences

8th EU-Mexico Summit

El Cisne Rojo2.0: El pulso de la geopolítica y las perspectivas económicas

El Cisne Rojo 2.0: El pulso de la geopolítica y las perspectivas económicas

Congreso Mundial de Estudiantes de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales 2026

XIV Congreso Internacional de Ciencia Política

XVII International Meeting of Historians of Mexico

Frequently asked questions

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

Related conferences

8th EU-Mexico Summit

El Cisne Rojo2.0: El pulso de la geopolítica y las perspectivas económicas

El Cisne Rojo 2.0: El pulso de la geopolítica y las perspectivas económicas

Congreso Mundial de Estudiantes de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales 2026

XIV Congreso Internacional de Ciencia Política

XVII International Meeting of Historians of Mexico

Frequently asked questions