Global Uncertainty & Volatility: Building Corporate Resilience in a Contested Future

Salzburg Global’s 2025 Corporate Governance Forum convened corporate board directors, C-suite executives, general counsels, risk managers, and policy advisors for high-level exploration of corporate board and committee functions in a fragmenting global trade environment.

Forum participants considered how businesses strategically address fragmentation in global trade, adapt to rapid technological disruption, and mitigate risks from rising populist economic policies. What actionable steps can boards take to fortify organizational resilience against: 1) regulatory volatility and escalating legal exposure, and 2) global erosion of the rule of law and its cascading uncertainties?

Revival of Great Power Politics

The stable consensus around globalization prior to the Great Financial Crisis (GFC)—anchored in free trade, multilateral institutions, and technocratic governance—has fractured under the weight of populist backlash in democratic nations, authoritarian consolidation in major economies, and systemic shocks like China’s domination of global manufacturing. The convergence of Great Power competition and institutional decay demands that boards embrace adaptive resilience—balancing corporate health with geopolitical foresight. To survive in this new era, MNCs are compelled to reimagine governance structures to withstand transactional statecraft, challenges to broadly accepted democratic norms and values, and ideological contestation.

Geopolitical risk management as a key to corporate resilience

Corporate boards are presented with a dizzying set of unpredictable challenges. Geopolitical risk and policy-driven legal peril must be treated as a key feature of a firm’s risk management framework alongside financial and operational risks. Board directors are required to rethink strategic assumptions and to develop resilience mechanisms for previously unlikely scenarios.

Geopolitical risk has shifted from peripheral concern to core boardroom priority, necessitating new tools and frameworks:

1. Scenario Planning: Reimagine scenarios outside of the normal distribution of the bell curve in light of geopolitical competition. Evaluate board and management skills and knowledge needed to respond appropriately.
2. Regulatory Agility: Develop proactive adaptation strategies to volatile policies, such as tariff surges and executive orders targeting tech and climate initiatives.
3. Rule of Law Defenses: Envision tools to mitigate risks from eroding judicial independence and contract enforcement.