Meet the research fellows: Erik Lang
PhD candidate Erik Lang is looking forward to exploring innovation economics and strategy at DIG, focusing on disruptive technologies and their economic and societal impact.
Meet the research fellows: Bjørn Schmeisser
Our associate professor for strategy and organization at NHH, explores three different research problems from an international business perspective.
With a background in international business and a PhD from WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Schmeisser joined NHH three years ago, where he is a member of DIG and leads the Strategy Group at the Department of Strategy and Management. His work revolves around understanding how firms adapt to digitalization, geopolitics and globalization, and institutional change.
Despite his background in international business strategy, Schmeisser describes himself as someone who does not follow a strict “strategic” approach when selecting research projects. Instead, he follows a curiosity-driven approach, exploring phenomena he considers interesting as they arise. This openness has led him to work on a variety of projects. At the moment, Schmeisser is focusing on three main projects, supported by an international team of colleagues and co-authors.
The digital transformation of international business
The first project examines how technological advancements are reshaping how business activities are conducted across borders. Schmeisser is collaborating with Tina Saebi, Paul Gooderham (both NHH) and Andreas Schotter (Ivey Business School, Canada) synthesizing existing insights from across the social sciences. This includes international business, innovation and entrepreneurship, information systems, and international relations. With his teams, Schmeisser has identified a taxonomy that distinguishes four archetypes of firms and their unique challenges in navigating digital transformation in international contexts.
“While prior research has provided valuable insights within this taxonomy, the broader body of knowledge remains underdeveloped in critical areas that warrant further attention, including (a) the need for new theory development on cross-border value creation and capture in digital firms, (b) deeper inquiry into legacy removal challenges for traditional firms, and (c) a more contextualized understanding of digital transformation in international business amid rising geopolitical tensions and increasing sustainability demands,” Schmeisser says.
In the article they are working on, they chart a clear way forward for international business scholarship to address these shortcomings and arrive at a more nuanced understanding of how firms navigate technological change, institutional complexity, and geopolitical tensions in an increasingly digital global economy. Besides contributing to the scholarly debate, the projects offer practical insights for firms managing digital transformation across borders.
Internationalization of knowledge-intensive services
In another project, Schmeisser examines together with colleagues from WU Vienna and Ivey Business School, how firms providing knowledge-intensive business services, such as consulting, engineering, or legal services that require sophisticated inputs from experts, are leveraging digitalization to expand internationally.
In a way, we are looking at how services internationalize, which is quite different from how physical products internationalize
Bjørn Schmeisser
“In a way, we are looking at how services internationalize, which is quite different from how physical products internationalize, and how service attributes, such as complexity or customization demands, affect internationalization choices and patterns over time,” Schmeisser explains.
To study these questions, they particularly focus on the different cost components associated with transferring and processing information across spatial distance and organizational boundaries, and how their interplay affects the service providers’ international expansion strategies, following economic considerations. For their empirical investigation, Schmeisser and his colleagues combine two unique datasets provided by Deutsche Bundesbank, containing panel data on FDI and cross-border trade across a wide range of service sectors.
“We find that higher service complexity decreases, while higher service customization demands increase the share of foreign sales that is realized by local production vs. exporting of knowledge-intensive services. However, in both cases, the better a service’s production and delivery can be digitized and proper digital infrastructure is available in the host country, the more will service providers choose exporting from their home country over local production of the service in the respective host country.”
Similarly, the scope of service providers’ global operations and their experience in serving a foreign market, both increase export shares at the expense of local production in foreign countries. According to Schmeisser, this finding contributes to the ongoing debate about whether we are witnessing “slowbalization” or even “de-globalization”, as cross-border investment and goods trade seem to stall or even decrease. He argues, however, that what we are seeing is probably not a reversal of globalization. Rather, globalization is taking on a new shape, sometimes referred to as “newbalization”, in which (digital) services, especially knowledge-intensive ones, and cross-border information flows are becoming the dominant drivers of the world economy.
Meet Jonas Hammerschimdt
Jonas Hammerschmidt joined the DIG Research Centre in September as an Assistant Professor in Strategy and Management at NHH. Originally from Germany, Jonas brings a combination of academic expertise and professional experience to his new role.
Sustainable development and institutional change
In addition to digitalization as a major shift and force in the economy, Schmeisser is involved in research on sustainable development and the role of institutional change, to tackle grand societal challenges as they are described in the UN SDGs. In a long-term project, together with colleagues from Copenhagen Business School, Villanova University, and WU Vienna, he explores how regulatory frameworks evolve through a combination of top-down government policies and bottom-up initiatives from businesses and civil society.
What is now the law in some countries, actually started as a voluntary initiative. Over time, these kinds of standards often originate in informal settings, gain momentum through industry practice, and eventually rise to the level of formal regulation.
Bjørn Schmeisser
“Take ESG, for example. What is now the law in some countries, actually started as a voluntary initiative. Over time, these kinds of standards often originate in informal settings, gain momentum through industry practice, and eventually rise to the level of formal regulation.”
“This is a pattern we increasingly observe in the SDG space, where norms initially driven by businesses or civil society are later adopted and codified by policymakers,” he adds.
By studying the interplay between top-down and bottom-up forces and how they co-evolve, the research by Schmeisser and his colleagues increases our understanding of how institutional change unfolds in practice, and how sustainable development is shaped not just by policy and top-down laws and regulations, but simultaneously also by innovation and pressure from the private business sector and civil society. This creates complex “co-evolutionary” dynamics, that policymakers and business decision makers should be aware of and navigate mindfully.
The way forward
While Schmeisser has encountered the usual academic hurdles, such as navigating the peer review process and securing research grants, he believes that the abundance of available data today makes it easier for researchers to access (most) study objects than ever before. Moving forward, he aims to focus on research that has tangible impact on business and policymaking, and responding to public calls for research that address pressing issues, such as the consequences of recent advancements in artificial intelligence for business, competition, and society at large.
“What I see myself doing now already, is spending more of my time speaking at events or workshops of our business partners in DIG, and writing research proposals for grants that involve not just researchers, but businesses and also government authorities. I think I will also do more of this in the future because it essentially means being more responsive to calls for a research voice in boardrooms, and to public calls for where new research is demanded.”