Micro-Foundations and Governance Design Choices in International Business: Toward an Integrative Framework

"The Department of International Business and Strategy at the Henley Business School is offering a fully-funded studentship for a PhD project on the ""Micro-Foundations and Governance Design Choices in International Business: Toward an Integrative Framework"", under the supervision of Professor Alain Verbeke. This project builds on previous research, such as Kano and Verbeke (2015).

The deadline is 15th June 2018, but ideally we would like potential applicants to make initial contact by 15th April 2018.

The Department of International Business and Strategy at the Henley Business School also provides fully-funded studentships and a unique opportunity to undertake original business relevant research in the fields of International Business, Business History and International Human Resource Management. Our postgraduate research students, drawn from all over the world, benefit from a dynamic research environment, supervision from internationally-renowned faculty, dedicated support and outstanding facilities. As a part of our PhD in International Business and Strategy, we offer the Henley International Business Masterclasses, which are intensive courses on current debates and conceptual issues in International Business, to give broader learning opportunities to younger scholars. Each masterclass offers the opportunity to engage in key International Business topics taught by notable intellectual figures in the field.

For more information on the PhD in International Business and Strategy and on available studentships please visit https://www.henley.ac.uk/school/international-business-and-strategy/phd-in-international-business-and-strategy or email us at [Email Address Removed]


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Description of the project on “Micro-Foundations and Governance Design Choices in International Business: Toward an Integrative Framework""

The term ‘micro-foundations’ represents the ‘nature of economic man’, as it affects the unfolding of purposive managerial decision-making in business organizations, with a special focus on governance design choices. The starting point for each of the research topics below, is that managerial decision making is always constrained by –and at the same time needs to build upon– two generic micro-foundations. The first is bounded rationality or Brat, which reflects economic actors being intrinsically rational, but facing imperfect information and having imperfect information processing capacity. The second is bounded reliability or BRel, a relatively new concept (Kano & Verbeke, 2015), which means expecting that economic actors involved in business organizations will be reliable to make good on their commitments, both explicit and implicit ones, but only boundedly so.
The core foundation of this research project is therefore that managerial decision-making in institutions of capitalism should be fundamentally guided by the need to economize jointly on BRat and BRel. Such economizing will drive choices on structural governance design and strategic governance design.
The research project will focus specifically on the need to adopt correct micro-foundations in governance design choices and on the implications of adopting ‘faulty’ ones. Research can be developed in the realm of strategy or international business, by focussing on the following topics: (1) Past, present and future of Chandlerian hierarchies; (2) Misaligned governance design and sustainability crises in large firms; (3) Past, present and future of corporate globalization (large multinational enterprises, ‘born globals’ and global value chains); and (4) Managing bifurcation bias in family firms: internationalization and succession practices around the world.
The four elements mentioned above, have as their common feature the explicit focus on micro-foundations. The starting point in each of the studies is that efficient governance design choices are contingent upon firm-specific, environment-specific, and class-of-transactions-specific characteristics, that create ex ante foreseeable BRat and BRel challenges, and therefore also suggest comparatively more efficient governance design choices. The problem with much past research is that realistic micro-foundations have not been explicitly acknowledged and incorporated in mainstream conceptual frameworks guiding governance design choices in strategic management and international business. Only research on governance design choices that incorporates correct micro-foundations can hope to contribute to theory that is both substantively rigorous and relevant to managerial practice.