Li Dai, Ph.D.
Professor of Management, College of Business Administration Loyola Marymount University
- Los Angeles CA
Media
Biography
Li Dai teaches undergraduate and MBA courses in international business, strategic management and global strategy at LMU. In addition, Dai has taught extensively in the business programs at Texas A&M University and Ivey Business School, with the latter's MBA program ranked #1 in the world by Bloomberg Businessweek. Her studies utilizing geo-referencing methodology on firm strategy in hostile contexts are considered seminal by peers in the field of management. This research, along with her work on institutions in emerging markets, has been recognized with prestigious awards and invited for publication by Oxford University Press and featured in the highest-ranked journals in fields spanning international business, strategic management and entrepreneurship. She is a faculty fellow at the Center for Emerging Markets at Northeastern University and sits on the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of International Business Studies and Journal of International Business Policy, both top-ranked journals in the field of international business and the two flagship journals of the Academy of International Business.
Education
University of Toronto
B.Com.
Finance and Economics
2006
Texas A&M University
Ph.D.
Strategic Management and International Business
2011
Social
Areas of Expertise
Industry Expertise
Accomplishments
LMU EMBA Business Applications of Blockchain Certificate
2019
eFaculty Certificate for Online and Hybrid Teaching and Learning
2019
Strategic Management Society Best Paper Prize Finalist
2017
Association Francophone de Management International Best Paper Award
2016
New Jersey Business and Industry Association Bright Idea Award
2015
The Moon Fellowship
2015
Multinational Business Review Most Cited Paper
2012
Skolkovo Best Paper Award Finalist
Academy of Management, 2012
Best Paper on Emerging Markets Finalist
Academy of Management, 2012
Farmer Best Dissertation Award Runner-Up
Academy of International Business, 2012
Best Overall Doctoral Paper
Southern Management Association, 2010
Best Paper in Strategy Track
Southern Management Association, 2010
Haynes Prize for Most Promising Scholar Finalist
Academy of International Business, 2009
Best Conceptual Paper Award
Emerald Publishing, 2008
Regents Scholarship
Texas A&M University, 2007
Dean's List
Faculty of Commerce, University of Toronto, 2003-2006
Affiliations
- Academy of International Business
- Strategic Management Society
- Academy of Management
Articles
Institutional Topography: A Review of Subnational Institutions
Journal of Management2025-01-01
Research on subnational institutions is largely motivated by the observation that formal and informal institutions within countries are unevenly configured over geographical space. Although diverse, this relatively nascent body of work has yet to explicate firm activity across subnational locales that exhibit institutional dissimilarity and isomorphism with both proximate and distant centers of political-economic power. To characterize firm activity over such spatially continuous institutional landscapes within countries, we synthesize insights from the subnational institutions literature by introducing a topography framework with its characteristic dimensions comprised of (1) polycentricity, (2) elevation, and (3) slope. We discuss theoretical contributions from using this framework to review 92 articles in the period 1999 to 2024 from 24 journals before concluding with directions for future research. This work integrates knowledge on subnational institutions across management sub-fields, including, but not limited to, international business, strategic management, and entrepreneurship.
Propagating a permanent war economy? U.S. FDI in warring host countries
Multinational Business Review2024-01-10
Conventional wisdom suggests that war in the host country makes it unattractive for foreign firms to invest. To see if this is true for US firms on the aggregate, this paper aims to examine the veracity of a “permanent war economy” hypothesis, that foreign direct investment (FDI) may, in fact, increase in the host country not despite, but because of, war, i.e. one that lends credence to the idea that, in the USA, “defense [has] become one of constant preparation for future wars and foreign interventions rather than an exercise in response to one-off threats.”
Anticipation and foreign exit from conflict zones: A vulnerability framework
Strategy in a Turbulent Era2024-01-09
This chapter advances theory to explain how differences in firms’ ability to anticipate the outbreak of a violent conflict affect their foreign exit decisions. Drawing on the literature on firm vulnerability to exogenous shocks, the chapter explores how differences in anticipation affect whether a firm exits the host country, and if so, the timing (early/late) and mode (partial/whole) of its exit. Our propositions are derived from a microeconomic model where the firm is assumed to be a rational actor engaging in decision-making under uncertainty, in which the exit strategy depends on the trade-off between the costs of exit and staying in response to an exogenous political shock. In this model, we explore the implications of bounded rationality together with optimistic and pessimistic biases on the firm’s decision-making. We find that anticipation of a violent conflict is positively associated with exit from the host country and that exit is more likely to be early and partial.
The timing and mode of foreign exit from conflict zones: A behavioral perspective
Journal of International Business Studies2022-12-07
We examine the timing and mode of firm exits from host-country conflict zones. We argue that timing and mode are interdependent decisions where decision ordering matters, and show that a firm’s prioritizing of either exit timing or mode is dependent on the relative salience of two behavioral stimuli: (1) the firm’s own experience (i.e., its performance shortfall), and (2) the experience of peer firms (i.e., their exits). Using instrumental variables modeling on a sample of 101 Japanese MNE exits from 11 conflict-afflicted countries between 1991 and 2005, we demonstrate that, when mode is prioritized over timing, partial exits tend to occur earlier and whole exits later. However, when timing is prioritized over mode, the decision choices reverse: earlier exits tend to be whole and later exits partial. The outcome of one decision therefore affects that of the other in a unique and predictable manner, such that the ordering of the decisions both produces and precludes strategic choices. Our findings, based on a multidecision problem that has traditionally been treated as a single decision (i.e., foreign exit), delineate expanded boundary conditions for satisficing, as well as reconcile optimizing and satisficing behaviors.
International diversification of family-dominant firms: Integrating socioemotional wealth and behavioral theory of the firm
Journal of World Business2020-04-01
Drawing on the behavioral theory of the firm, we shed light on an extant debate about whether family firms are more or less likely to diversify internationally. In an analysis of firm-level data from 93 countries over 2011–2018, we find that family-dominant firms—with their established preference for low breadth-high depth international diversification—will seek to increase their breadth when performance falls below aspiration level, but that doing so can hurt their performance stability. Our study advances the literature by identifying important boundary conditions to their prioritization of socioemotional wealth and micro-foundational mechanisms that underlie strategic change in family-dominant firms.
A delicate balance for innovation: Competition and collaboration in R&D consortia
Management and Organization Review2019-03-04
This study examines how competitive and cooperative relationships within R&D consortia influence member firms’ innovation output. We propose a U-shaped relationship between the presence of market competitors for a member firm and the firm's joint R&D output with other consortium members, and examine how the relationship is mediated by interactions with other members at the firm level and moderated by collaborative efforts at the consortium level. Using a unique sample of 320 firms from 52 R&D consortia in China, we find support for our predictions. This multi-level study extends our understanding of competition and cooperation in multi-party networks and provides insights for creating a balance between the two forces that is conducive to innovation.
Caught in the crossfire: Dimensions of vulnerability and foreign multinationals’ exit from war-afflicted countries
Strategic Management Journal2016-11-30
When war occurs in a country, some foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs) stay on, while others flee. We argue that MNE responses to external threats depend on the firm's vulnerability, which we decompose into exposure (proximity to threat), at-risk resources (potential for loss), and resilience (capacity for coping).
Multinational enterprises and emerging markets
Oxford Bibliographies in Management2015-08-31
This article presents research on how multinational enterprises (MNEs) seeking high-growth opportunities tackle these challenges in entering emerging market countries before introducing a group of studies on emerging market multinationals.
Entrepreneurial orientation and international scope: The differential roles of innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking
Journal of Business Venturing2014-07-01
This research integrates the international business and entrepreneurship literatures by examining the independent influences of innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking on the ability of a firm to broaden its scope across international markets.
Global strategy: MNEs in deadly environments: Strategic responses to disasters, conflict and crime
Academy of Management, Best Paper Proceedings2014-05-01
An emerging body of research in international business examines firm response to challenging environments involving disasters, conflict and crime.
Place, space, and geographical exposure: Foreign subsidiary survival in conflict zones
Journal of International Business Studies2013-04-18
This study focuses on the role of geography in foreign subsidiary survival in host countries afflicted by political conflict. We argue that survival is a function of exposure to conflicts, and depends on the characteristics of place (the conflict zone) and space (geographic concentration and dispersion of other home-country firms).
Understanding technology and industry emergence: A qualitative study of the fuel cell industry
Academy of Management, Best Paper Proceedings2013-04-01
This research empirically examines the Aldrich and Fiol (1994) model of industry creation to assess the cognitive and sociopolitical factors at the organizational, intra-industry and inter-industry levels that influence emerging technologies and industries.
External threats and MNE strategy: The role of exposure, resources and coping mechanisms
Academy of Management Proceedings2012-01-01
Multinational enterprises (MNEs), when threatened by political violence in a host country, make different choices; some stay, others exit. What determines who stays and who leaves?
International business, international management, and international strategic management: What is in a name?
International Studies of Management and Organization2010-12-10
In this article, we build on Boddewyn's earlier research to explore the three fields of inquiry, develop new domain statements, and link them to one another.
Rethinking the O in Dunning’s OLI paradigm
Multinational Business Review2010-05-01
In this paper, we focus specifically on the O in the OLI paradigm, tracing the history of Dunning’s ownership advantages. We argue that the modifications of O advantages over the past 37 years, as Dunning attempted to bring all IB phenomena and IB‐related theories under the OLI “big tent,” has had mixed results.
Caught in the middle: Multinational enterprise strategy in interstate warfare
Competitiveness Review2009-09-25
The purpose of this paper is to investigate interstate warfare and its association with foreign direct investment (FDI) and multinational enterprise (MNE) strategy by integrating insights from international business (IB) and international political economy (IPE) literature.
Maximizing cooperation in a competitive environment
Competitive Forum2008-06-05
The purpose of this paper is to delineate the conditions and governance structures that facilitate cooperation among firms, which are by default competitors. The theoretical lenses of resource dependence theory, institutional theory, and transaction cost theory are employed to show how organizations can coordinate to achieve the optimum level of cooperation along two dimensions, uncertainty and technology.
