BI's Departments

Department of Strategy

Department of Strategy is an active, leading and innovative institution that develops and disseminates expertise in the field of strategy.

The institute offers courses at bachelor, master and doctoral levels, as well as courses aimed at the experience-based Executive market. Several of the department's academic staff teaches managers at MBA and Executive Master of Management at BI’s reputable partner institutions abroad, like Fudan University in Shanghai and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Academic, modern and relevant teaching methods

The department focuses on the discipline’s research front, and have adopted digital teaching methods. It is a goal that teaching should be relevant to business. As an example, the subject "strategy" for third year MSc in Business students developed a Telenor video case where students discussed and voted on the real strategic challenges that Telenor has faced in its international operations. The students were then given an introduction of how Telenor had actually handled the challenges. The course also had CEO of the technology company mCash as a guest lecturer, and students were given the opportunity to pitch proprietary strategy proposals. The pitch competition was an exciting opportunity for students to apply their knowledge in a real and relevant strategic challenge that all participants in the mobile payments market face with today.

Research

The department has a strong focus on research and publishes regularly in relevant and reputable scientific journals. In 2016 the department had around 30 articles in total, five of these were at level 4/4 * and on the Financial Times list, while seven were on ABS 3.

BI is, through the Department’s Centre for Construction Industry, an academic partner of Klima 2020, a CRI that focuses on strategic change for climate adaptation of buildings and infrastructure. The past year the centre also implemented a major pioneering project in close collaboration with the DibK, OBOS, AF Gruppen, Veidekke and Skanska, where the aim is to identify and describe the development of the construction costs related to property development in Norway in recent years. The building industry granted an endowed professorship in efficient construction processes in 2016, held by Ragnhild Kvålshaugen.

Several of the department's research projects are related to industrial competitiveness. The aim is to contribute to the visibility of the different industries' impact on the Norwegian economy as well as the opportunities and challenges that are linked to the value creation within some of the most important industries in Norway. The cooperation Innovative Nordics is a collaborative research with the School of Economics in Stockholm and is mapping nation-wide industrial clusters in Norway and Sweden.

Three doctorates in the PhD specialization of Strategic Management were presented in 2016. The new PhDs Anton Diachenko, Asmund Rygh and Xiaobei Wang have all been fellows at the Department of Strategy.

International environment

The department has a particular focus on international recruitment. Eight nationalities are represented in the faculty as Assistant Professors, Adjunct Professors and Associate Professors / Professors.

The department also organizes a very active series of seminars with international researchers in the field of strategy. In addition, the department hosted several guest professors during 2016.

Awards in 2016

• Marcus Møller Larsen won the Danish Society for Education and Business / Copenhagen Business School Research Prize 2016 and the Tietgen award 2016. He also won the Emerald Citations of Excellence 2016 for the paper "Uncovering the hidden costs of offshoring: The interplay of complexity, organizational design, and experience”, Strategic Management Journal, 2013
• Birgitte Grøgaard won the Best Paper in Track at EIBA Annual Conference, Vienna with the paper Do the Origins of FDI Matter of Target Firms in Developed Host Countries? Empirical Evidence from the North American Oil and Gas Industry. Zeng, Rong & Grøgaard, Birgitte
• Ulf Andersson was appointed Fellow of the Academy of International Business, and he won The Strategic Management Society Best Paper award with the paper 'Going Against the Grain: The Impact of Mandate Loss on Subsidiary Evolutionary Trajectories'. (Edward Gillmore & Ulf Andersson)

Selected publications, the Financial Times-list

• Cuervo-Cazurra, Alvaro; Andersson, Ulf; Brannen, Mary; Nielsen, Bo; Reuber, Rebecca. 
   Can I trust your findings? Ruling out alternative explanations in international business research. Journal of International Business Studies 2016.Volum 47.
• Sarala, Riikka, M.; Junni, Paulina; Cooper, Cary L; Tarba, Shlomo. A Sociocultural Perspective on Knowledge Transfer in Mergers and Acquisitions. Journal of management 2016;Volum 42.(5)
• Kolbjørnsrud, Vegard; Amico, Richard; Thomas, Robert J. How Artificial Intelligence Will Redefine Management. Harvard Business Review 2016
• Luzzi, Alessandra; Sasson, Amir. Individual Entrepreneurial Exit and Earnings in Subsequent Paid Employment. Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice 2016;Volum 40.(2)
• Lu, Ren; Ruan, Min; Reve, Torger. Cluster and co-located cluster effects: An empirical study of six Chinese city regions. Research Policy 2016;Volum 45.(10)
• Swärd, Anna Sundberg. Trust, reciprocity, and actions: The development of trust in temporary inter-organizational relations. Organization Studies 2016;Volum 37. (12)

Four research centres are affiliated with the department

• Centre for Construction Industry (Manager: Lena Bygballe)
• Centre for Management of Telecom and Network Industry (Manager: Øystein Fjeldstad)
• Centre for Digitization (Manager: Espen Andersen)
• Centre for risk and insurance research (Manager: Johannes Brinkmann)

Three endowed professorships are affiliated with the department

• The Telenor-Professorship in International Strategy and Management (Øystein Fjeldstad)
• Shipowner Tom Wilhelmsen’s Foundation Professorship in Strategy and Industrial Competitiveness (Torger Reve)
• Endowed Professorship in efficient construction processes (Ragnhild Kvålshaugen)