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Gary Knight

Professor of Global Management; Helen Simpson Jackson Endowed Chair of International Management

Headshot of Gary Knight

Contact Information

Salem Campus

Address
900 State Street
Salem  Oregon  97301
U.S.A.

Portland Center

Address
200 SW Market Street, Suite 101
Portland  Oregon  97201
U.S.A.
Phone
503-370-6618 (o), 360-833-3868 (c)

Education

  • Ph.D. Michigan State University
  • M.B.A. University of Washington
  • B.A. Washington State University

Biography

Professor Knight has extensive experience in international business in the private sector, especially regarding Europe, Japan, and Mexico. For 15 years, he was professor of international business at Florida State University where he developed the university’s business study abroad programs in Europe and Japan. He was a visiting Fulbright Scholar at McGill University, Canada. His research emphasizes international strategy, emerging markets, and internationalization of small and medium enterprises.

Professor Knight has authored six books and 40 refereed articles in academic journals, including Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of World Business, Journal of Business Venturing, and Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, among others. The U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Small Business invited Professor Knight to provide expert testimony on international management topics.

He has been an invited speaker at numerous universities worldwide. In addition to graduate degrees, Professor Knight attended the University of Paris in France and Sophia University in Japan and is fluent in French and Japanese. Personal interests include world affairs, reading, writing, international travel, and learning foreign languages.

Willamette University MBA offers a one-credit course each fall and spring semester that includes a week-long international study trip to different locations around the world. Learn more here: Willamette MBA Study Abroad.

Message

Organizations produce, market, and conduct other value-adding activities on a global scale. Firms seek customers abroad and engage in collaborative relationships with foreign business partners. While global commerce has existed for centuries, recently it has grown in speed and complexity. New realities reflect globalization, technological advances, and new global competitors. The rise of international smaller firms and of emerging markets in Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere represent growing diversity in international management. Globalization and technological advances both support and compel organizations, large and small, to engage global environments. Managers need an improved understanding of the evolving international landscape. My teaching aims to provide balanced coverage of large multinational organizations, small and medium-sized enterprises, and the growing role of government and non-governmental organizations.

Areas of Instruction

Global management and innovation, international entrepreneurship, launching and managing international ventures

Research Interests

International management strategy, strategy in ‘bottom-of-the-pyramid’ countries and emerging markets, strategy of the ‘born global’ firm, international entrepreneurship

Honors, Awards and Distinctions

Elected a Fellow of the Academy of International Business (AIB), the main organization for academics in international business. The AIB has approximately 3,500 members, of which about 100 are Fellows.

Winner, JIBS Silver Medal, 2019, for intellectual contributions published in the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS). JIBS is the leading academic journal in the field of International Business. The AIB Executive Board awards the Silver Medal to scholars who have published at least 5 significant articles in JIBS.

Ranked among the Top 60 (Top 1%) marketing scholars worldwide based on career-long citation impact, in an independent analysis of the impact of hundreds of thousands of scholars across various scientific fields. Source: John Ioannidis et al (2019), “A Standardized Citation Metrics Author Database Annotated for Scientific Field,” PLoS Biol 17(8): e3000384.

Ranked the second most influential scholar in the discipline of “international marketing”, worldwide, 1995-2015, out of 2,333 total scholars. Source: L. Leonidou et al, (2018), “International Marketing Research: A State-of-the-Art Review,” in Advances in Global Marketing, L. Leonidou et al, (eds.). New York: Springer: 3-33.

Ranking at Google Scholar (scholar.google.com), which tracks citations of scholarly literature by individual scholars by discipline: No. 14 in “international business”; No. 6 in “international management”; No. 5 in “international marketing”; No. 2 in “international entrepreneurship”. More than 27,000 total citations.

Winner, JIBS Decade Award, 2014, Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS), for the 2004 JIBS article “Innovation, Organizational Capabilities, and the Born-Global Firm” (with Tamer Cavusgil). JIBS is the leading academic journal in International Business and gives the Decade Award to the article that has most impacted international business research in the decade following its publication.

Selected Professional Activities

Editorial Boards: Multinational Business Review, Journal of International Management, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of World Business, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of International Marketing

Vice President, Program, 2019-22, Academy of International Business

Program Chair, 2020-2021, Annual Conference of the Academy of International Business

Chair, 2013-2020, Academy of International Business, Western United States Chapter

Selected Publications

Cavusgil, S. Tamer, Gary Knight, and John Riesenberger (2020), International Business: The New Realities. New York: Pearson.

Elizabeth Napier, Gary Knight, Yadong Luo, and Andrew Delios (2023), “Corporate Social Performance in International Business,” Journal of International Business Studies, forthcoming

Knight, Gary, Agnieszka Chidlow, and Dana Minbaeva (2022), “Methodological Fit for Empirical Research in International Business: A Contingency Framework,” Journal of International Business Studies, 53 (1): 39-52.

Amankwah-Amoah, Joseph, Zaheer Khan, Geoffrey Wood, and Gary Knight (2021), “Covid-19 and Digitalization: The Great Acceleration,” Journal of Business Research, 136: 602-611.

Czinkota, Michael, Zaheer Khan, and Gary Knight (2021), “International Business and the Migrant-Owned Enterprise,” Journal of Business Research, 22: 657-669.

Knight, Gary, Oystein Moen, and Tage Madsen (2020), “Antecedents to Differentiation Strategy in the Exporting SME,” International Business Review, 29(6): 1-14.

Weerawardena, Jay, Sandeep Salunke, Gary Knight, Gillian Sullivan-Mort, and Peter Liesch (2020), “The Learning Subsystem Interplay in Service Innovation in Born Global Service Firm Internationalization,” Industrial Marketing Management, 89: 181-195.

Hannibal, Martin and Gary Knight (2018) “Additive Manufacturing and the Global Factory: Disruptive Technologies and the Location of International Business,” International Business Review, 27(6): 116-127. (Listed among the 10 most cited articles in International Business Review.)

Reuber, Rebecca, Gary Knight, Peter Liesch, and Lianxi Zhou (2018) "International Entrepreneurship: The Pursuit of Entrepreneurial Opportunities Across National Borders" Journal of International Business Studies, 49(4): 395-406.

Schwens, Christian, Florian Zapkau, Michael Bierwerth, Rodrigo Isidor, Gary Knight, and Ruediger Kabst (2018), “International Entrepreneurship: A Meta-Analysis on the Internationalization and Performance Relationship,” Entrepreneurship, Theory and Practice, 42(5): 734-768. (Ranked the most cited article at this journal, 2018 through 2020).

Willamette University

Atkinson Graduate School of Management

Salem Campus

Address
900 State Street
Salem Oregon 97301 U.S.A.
Phone
503-370-6167

Portland Center

Address
200 SW Market Street, Suite 101
Portland Oregon 97201 U.S.A.
Phone
971-717-7260