Frontline IB: Conversations With International Business Scholars

Adamantios Diamantopoulos

Adamantios Diamantopoulos (Ph.D., D.Litt.) is Professorial Research Fellow at the Department of Marketing and International Business, University of Vienna, Austria. He is also Visiting Professor at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia and Senior Fellow at the Dr. Theo and Friedl Schoeller Research Center, Germany. During 2004-2023, he held the Chair of International Marketing at the University of Vienna. During 2012-13, he was the “Joseph A. Schumpeter Fellow” at Harvard University, USA. 
 He is the author of 200+ papers with over 54,000 citations (h-index: 93; Google Scholar, November 2023) published, among others, in Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Service Research, Journal of International Marketing, Journal of Retailing, MIS Quarterly, Organizational Research Methods, Psychological Methods, Information Systems Research, and British Journal of Management. 
 He ranks #8 worldwide in terms of citations among a total of 13,180 marketing scholars (Ioannidis, 2023) as well #1 in Austria and #94 worldwide in the 2022 Ranking of Top 1000 Scientists in Business and Management (Research.com, 2022). He is the most prolific contributor to Journal of International Marketing (Donthu et al., 2021) and the recipient of four Hans B. Thorelli Awards. He is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business, the British Academy of Management, and the European Marketing Academy. In 2019, he was awarded the JIBS Silver Medal and, in 2021, he received the Significant Contributions to Global Marketing award from the American Marketing Association.  
Visit https://www.aib.world/frontline-ib/adamantios-diamantopoulos/ for the original video interview.

Franklin Allen

Franklin Allen is Professor of Finance and Economics and Director of the Brevan Howard Centre at Imperial College London and has held these positions since July 2014.  In August 2019 he became the Associate Dean for Faculty and Research in the Business School and in August 2020 the Vice-Dean (Research & Faculty) there.  In September 2023 he became Interim Dean.  He was on the faculty of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania from September 1980 – June 2016. He now has Emeritus status there. He was formerly Vice Dean and Director of Wharton Doctoral Programs, Co-Director of the Wharton Financial Institutions Center, Executive Editor of the Review of Financial Studies and Managing Editor of the Review of Finance.
He is a past President of the American Finance Association, the Western Finance Association, the Society for Financial Studies, the Financial Intermediation Research Society and the Financial Management Association, and a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the British Academy.  He received his doctorate from Oxford University.
Dr. Allen’s main areas of interest are corporate finance, asset pricing, financial innovation, comparative financial systems, and financial crises.  He is a co-author with Richard Brealey and Stewart Myers of the eighth through thirteenth editions and with Alex Edmans as well of the fourteenth edition of the textbook Principles of Corporate Finance.
Visit https://www.aib.world/frontline-ib/franklin-allen/ for the original video interview.

Alain Verbeke

Dr. Alain Verbeke is a Professor of International Business Strategy and the McCaig Chair in Management at the University of Calgary. He also serves as the Alan M. Rugman Memorial Fellow at the University of Reading. 
He is associated with the Solvay Business School (VUB) and has been a Visiting Professor at the Université Catholique de Louvain and an Associate Fellow of Templeton College. He has served two full terms as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International Business Studies – JIBS, during which time the journal’s citation impact (without self-cites) doubled.  
Dr. Verbeke’s main contributions to the field of international business strategy include, inter alia:(1) making the critical distinction between location-bound and non-location bound firm-specific advantages of multinational enterprises; (2) the subsidiary specific advantage concept; (3) the bounded reliability concept; (4) the concept of bifurcation bias in family firms; (5) substantial work demonstrating the dominance of regional over global strategies.  
Dr. Verbeke is an elected Fellow of the Academy of International Business (AIB) and the European International Business Academy (EIBA).  He is also an active member in the Strategic Management Society (SMS).  He was the recipient of the double Gold Medal awarded by the AIB for his intellectual contributions in JIBS and for his service to the journal. In 2023, the was bestowed with the AIB Exemplary Service Award for his role as Editor-in-Chief of JIBS.  
 
Visit https://www.aib.world/frontline-ib/alain-verbeke-2024/ for the original video interview.

Karl Sauvant

Karl P. Sauvant is Resident Senior Fellow at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI), a joint center of Columbia Law School and the Earth Institute at Columbia University; Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia Law School (where he teaches a seminar on FDI and public policy); Fellow, Academy of International Business; and Honorary Fellow, European International Business Academy. He is a national of Germany, married to Silvana F. da Silva, a national of Brazil. 
Dr. Sauvant launched, in 2015, a proposal for an international support program to facilitate sustainable investment; structured discussions on a multilateral Investment Facilitation Framework for Development began in the WTO in 2018, and were upgraded to negotiations in 2020. He has advocated, since 2004, the establishment of an Advisory Center on International Investment Law, a proposal that was put on the agenda of the United Nations Commission on Trade Law (UNCITRAL) in October 2019. Since 1998, he has championed the establishment of a facility that helps developing countries negotiate large-scale contracts with international investors; the proposal was put on the G7 agenda in 2014, under the name of “CONNEX”, and was implemented by Germany in 2017, when it established the CONNEX Support Unit in Berlin. In January 2006, Sauvant established the Columbia Program on International Investment (today the CCSI), serving as its Executive Director until February 2012. As Chief of the Research Section of the United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations, he created the World Investment Report and was its lead author until 2004, at UNCTAD; he also founded the journal Transnational Corporations, serving as its editor until 2005. 
Dr. Sauvant received a Ph.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. He joined the United Nations in 1973 and, as of 1975, has focused his work on matters related to FDI. He rose to Director of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development's (UNCTAD’s) Investment Division. He has published extensively on issues related to economic development and various aspects of foreign direct investment. 
Visit https://www.aib.world/frontline-ib/karl-sauvant/ for the original video interview.

Christopher Bartlett

Professor Christopher Bartlett is the Thomas D. Casserly Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School. He received a B.Econ. degree from the University of Queensland and both an MBA and DBA from Harvard University.
Prior to his academic career, he worked as a marketing manager with Alcoa in Australia, a management consultant in McKinsey's London office, and general manager of Baxter Laboratories' subsidiary in France.
He joined the faculty of Harvard Business School in 1979 where his research focused on the management challenges facing large, complex, global corporations. His eight books include (co-authored with the late Sumantra Ghoshal) Managing Across Borders: The Transnational Solution (named by the Financial Times as one of the 20th century’s 50 most influential business books) and The Individualized Corporation (named by Strategy + Business magazine as one of the best business books of the new millennium). Both books have been translated into more than ten languages.
He has authored or co-authored over 50 book chapters and articles and written over 100 case studies which collectively have sold more than seven million copies worldwide, making him the best-selling case author in the history of HBS.
During his three decades at HBS, he chaired the School’s General Management Unit, ran the International Senior Management Program, headed the Program for Global Leadership, and led the Humanitarian Leadership Program.
Professor Bartlett is a Fellow of the Academy of Management, the Academy of International Business, and the Strategic Management Society. In 2001, the Academy Management’s International Division honoured him with its Distinguished Scholar Award.
He has served on the board of six public companies and five non-profits.
Visit https://www.aib.world/frontline-ib/christopher-bartlett/ for the original video interview.

Lemma Senbet

Lemma W. Senbet is the William Mayer Chair Professor of Finance at the University of Maryland and a former ED/CEO of African Economic Research Consortium, the oldest and largest economic research and training network in Africa. Prior to Maryland and AERC, he held endowed chaired professorship at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Prof Senbet has achieved global recognition for his widely cited contributions to corporate finance, international finance, and finance in a public domain. He has received numerous recognitions for his impact on the profession. He has been elected twice as Director of the American Finance Association and is a past President of the Western Finance Association. In 2000, he was inducted into the Financial Economists Roundtable, a distinguished group of world-wide financial economists. In 2006, he was inducted Fellow of the Financial Management Association. In 2005, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia). In 2022 he was inducted AIB Fellow.
Prof Senbet has been editor and associate editor at over a dozen journals, including JF and JIBS. Moreover, he has supervised numerous doctoral students and placed them at leading institutions. He has also advised World Bank, IMF, UN, and other agencies globally on financial sector reforms and development. He is a member of:  Brookings AGI Distinguished Advisory Group; Advisory Panel of the G20 Compact with Africa; Independent Council of Economic Advisors (appointed by the Prime Minister of Ethiopia).  Regarding his role in the US financial industry, Prof Senbet was a Director of Fortis Funds and has been an independent Director for the Hartford Funds. 
Visit https://www.aib.world/frontline-ib/lemma-senbet/ for the original video interview.

Jan-Erik Vahlne

Jan-Erik Vahlne is an award-winning international business scholar whose distinctions include:
Journal of International Business Studies, Decade Award, 1987 and 2019
International Marketing Review, Best Paper Award 1990
International Business Review, Best Paper Award 2012
Over the course of his career, Dr. Vahlne has served in variety of professional positions, including:
1978-83: Secretary, Governmental Committee on Foreign Direct Investment
1986-88: Associate Dean, Graduate School of Business, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan
1988-1995: Professor, Stockholm School of Economics
1993-1995: President, Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, Latvia
1996-2011: Professor, Gothenburg University
2011-Present: Professor Emeritus, Gothenburg University
Visit https://www.aib.world/frontline-ib/jan-erik-vahlne/ for the original video interview.

Ingmar Björkman

Ingmar Björkman is Rector (President) of Hanken School of Economics in Helsinki, Finland. Before joining Hanken, Björkman was Dean (2012-19) as well as Professor (2020-22) at Aalto University School of Business in Finland.
Ingmar’s research interests focus on people management issues in international organizations. Ingmar is a winner of the JIBS Decade Award (with D. Minbaeva, T. Pedersen, C. Fey & H-J. Park). His most recent article is: Zeng, R., Grøgaard, B. & Björkman, I (2023): Navigating MNE Control and Coordination: A Critical Review and Directions for Future Research. Journal of International Business Studies, doi.org/10.1057/s41267-023-00600-7. His latest book is Global Challenge: Managing People across Borders (fourth edition, 2023), co-authored with Vladimir Pucik, Paul Evans, and Günter Stahl.
Ingmar has received best/outstanding teacher awards in three different business schools across two continents and the International Educator (Dean) of the Year Award from the Academy of International Business (AIB) in 2019.
Visit https://www.aib.world/frontline-ib/ingmar-bjorkman/ for the original video interview.

Ilan Vertinsky

Ilan Vertinsky is Vinod Sood Professor of International Business Studies, Strategy and Business Economics in the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He is also an associate of the Peter Wall Institute of Advanced Studies and a former Distinguished Scholar in Residence of the Institute. He previously served as director of the Center for international Business studies, Associate director of the Institute Asian Research, director of the Maurice Young Entrepreneurship & Venture Capital Research Centre and Director of the Forest Economics and Policy Analysis unit. He was also a member of the faculty of the Institute of Resource Ecology.
Ilan received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Business specializing in Operations Research. Prior to joining the faculty at UBC he served on the faculty of Northwestern University.
He has published over 300 refereed journal articles, book chapters and books. His publications include journals such as The Journal of International Business Studies, the Journal of international Economics, Review of Economic Studies, Strategic Management Journal, Management Science, Operations Research, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and the Journal of Marketing. His research awards include the University’s Killam Research prize, the Sauder’s Professional Research Excellence Prize, AGSM’s Outstanding Scholarship Award and the Seagram Senior Faculty Award. Ilan is a former area editor of The Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS) and currently serves as a consulting editor of the journal.
Ilan’s current research focuses on the following areas: (1) transfers of knowledge in international joint ventures; (2) risk management and resilience development related to climate change, (3) competitive learning in domestic and cross- border alliances, patent litigation and innovation, and (4) the implications of the ongoing USA-China technology rivalry.
Visit https://www.aib.world/frontline-ib/ilan-vertinsky/ for the original video interview.

Philip Kotler

Philip Kotler is the S. C. Johnson Distinguished Professor of International Marketing (Emeritus) at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.  He has been honored as one of the world’s leading marketing thinkers and has been called The Father of Modern Marketing.  He received his M.A. degree in economics (1953) from the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. degree in economics (1956) from the M.I.T.
He has received honorary degrees from 22 foreign universities. He is the author of Marketing Management, first published in 1967 and now in its 16th edition.  Kotler has published over 90 books and 170 journal articles, including Confronting Capitalism, Democracy in Decline, and Advancing the Common Good.  He has consulted IBM, Merck, GE, AT&T, Bank of America, Motorola, Ford, and others.  He has spoken all over the world and runs the World Marketing Summits.
Visit https://www.aib.world/frontline-ib/philip-kotler/ for the original video interview.