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Luis Alfonso Dau, Ph.D. - Global Resilience Institute. Boston, MA, UNITED STATES

Luis Alfonso Dau, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, International Business & Strategy. Associate Fellow, Center for Emerging Markets, Northeastern University | Faculty Affiliate, Global Resilience Institute

Boston, MA, UNITED STATES

Professor Dau's research and teaching interests include global strategy, emerging market firms, institutional changes, pro-market reforms.

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Biography

Luis Alfonso Dau is an associate professor of International Business and Strategy at the D'Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University. He obtained his doctorate in International Business and Strategy at the Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina (Promising Researcher Award); and his Global MBA from Thunderbird and ITESM (Valedictorian). He is also a John H. Dunning Visiting Fellow at Henley Business School, University of Reading. Prior to his Ph.D. studies, he was a successful manager and entrepreneur in Guadalajara, Mexico.

His research focuses on the effects of globalization and institutional changes on the international strategy and performance of emerging market firms. His work has received numerous awards and has been published in the leading academic journals in the field, including Academy of Management Journal, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of World Business, Global Strategy Journal, Journal of International Management, Management International Review, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, and Journal of Business Venturing. He has also conducted field research in several Latin American countries, including Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico.

Dr. Dau is also an accomplished instructor and communicator; whose teaching interests are primarily in international business and global corporate social responsibility. He has taught a number of undergraduate and graduate courses for which he has consistently received exceptional teaching evaluations. He has taught or given presentations at top schools in several emerging markets, including IPADE and ITESM in Mexico, UDD in Chile, PUC in Brazil, and IIM Calcutta in India. He is an impassioned and energetic communicator, having won various public-speaking awards from Toastmasters and other organizations. Moreover, he speaks English, Spanish, and French fluently, has a working knowledge of Italian, and has extensive international experience, having visited over 50 countries.

Areas of Expertise (13)

Financial Resilience

Formal and Informal Entrepreneurship

International Corporate Social Responsibility

Family Firms

Pro-Market Reforms

Emerging Market Firms

Governance and Incentives

Global Strategy

Institutional Changes

Business Groups

Firm Performance

Sustainability

Culutre

Accomplishments (11)

Peter J. Buckley International Visiting Fellowship (professional)

University of Leeds Business School, 2018-Present

John H. Dunning Visiting Fellowship (professional)

University of Reading, Henley Business School, 2016-Present

Robert and Denise DiCenso Professorship (professional)

2017-2022

Joseph G. Riesman Professorship (professional)

2014-2016

Global Resiliency Institute Cross-College Research Seed-Funding Grant (professional)

2017-2019

Best Paper in Global Strategy (professional)

Academy of Management (International Management Division), 2016

Best Paper (professional)

Academy of International Business - Latin America, 2013

Best Paper in Strategy/International Business Theory (professional)

Academy of Management (International Management Division), 2009

Best Paper on Emerging Markets (professional)

European International Business Academy, 2009

Best Selling Case (professional)

Ivey Publishing, 2013-2018 (One of the top selling cases out of over 28,000 cases available)

Winner: 11 Best Reviewer Awards (professional)

Journal of International Business Studies, 2017 Journal of Business Research, 2017 Academy of International Business, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2017 Academy of Management - International Management Division, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2017, 2018 1 Outstanding Reviewer Award, Academy of Management - International Management Division 2011

Education (2)

University of South Carolina: PhD, International Business/Strategy

Thunderbird/ITESM: Global MBA

Affiliations (10)

  • Academy of International Business - Executive Board Member: Vice President of Administration, 2018-2021
  • Strategic Management Society - Global Strategy Interest Group - Representative-at-Large, 2018-2019
  • Journal of International Business Studies : Editorial Review Boards
  • Global Strategy Journal : Editorial Review Boards
  • Journal of World Business: Editorial Review Boards
  • Doctoral Student Consortium, Academy of International Business : Chair
  • Doctoral Student Consortium, Academy of International Business Latin America : Chair
  • Academy of International Business Latin America : Paper Track Scientific Committee Member
  • Outreach Development Committee, Academy of International Business : Committee Member
  • Strategic Planning Committee, Academy of International Business : Committee Member

Media Appearances (1)

Complacency and Automation Bias in the Enbridge Pipeline Disaster

ergonomics in design  online

2017-01-02

Less experienced operators and better adherence to safety protocols might have prevented failure to attend to repeated warnings that a shutdown was necessary

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Research Grants (1)

Terrorism and international business: Building financial resilience

Global Resilience Institute 

To date, there has been scant theoretical or empirical research on how terrorism affects business. Our project will answer four main questions about what we have coined as financial resilience: (1) How do businesses respond in the face of terrorism? (2) What are the determinants of their responses? (3) Which businesses are most resilient to terrorism? (4) And how can other businesses enhance their own resilience to terrorism? Our preliminary research indicates that family firms outperform other business types across numerous metrics due to superior social capital. Additionally, businesses appear to bolster their financial resilience by becoming more geographically dispersed and socially responsible. These incipient findings hold potentially profound implications for businesses around the world. With a mixed-methods research design, our project will rigorously test these and other novel propositions about financial resilience and thereby develop a new, actionable, substantively meaningful research agenda of genuine consequence to both academic and policy communities.

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Articles (5)

The More the Merrier? Immigrant Share and Entrepreneurial Activities


Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice

Chengguang Li, Rodrigo Isidor, Luis Alfonso Dau,

2018 We examine the relationship between immigrant share and entrepreneurial activities in a country. Building on knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship (KSTE), we hypothesize that immigrant share positively relates to the creation, growth, and export activities of new firms through knowledge spillover between immigrant and native communities. We further suggest that favorable attitudes of natives toward immigrants positively moderate this relationship. Using data for 32 countries from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, we find support for the hypothesized direct relationships and for the moderating influence of a nation's attitude toward immigrants. Our study has implications for KSTE and research on entrepreneurship and immigration.

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The interplay of national distances and regional networks: Private equity investments in emerging markets


Journal of International Business Studies

Santiago Mingo, Francisco Morales and Luis Alfonso Dau

2018 Integrating social network theory with the literature on national distance, we examine how the investment strategy followed by a private equity (PE) firm in an emerging market is affected by the interplay between two important types of national distances – institutional and geographic – and the firm’s centrality in the regional syndication network. Covering over 5,000 investment transactions, we use a dataset of more than 500 PE firms based in both developed and emerging markets targeting three emerging market regions – Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe – from 1996 to 2011. The results show that, depending on the level of centrality of PE firms in regional syndication networks, institutional and geographic distances can have differing effects – both in magnitude and direction – on their investment strategies in emerging markets. Moreover, these effects are contingent on whether the PE firm is from a developed market or an emerging market. We conclude that different types of national distances can operate in dissimilar ways depending on (1) firm-level factors defined at the regional level – such as centrality in the regional syndication network – and (2) the developed market or emerging market nature of the PE firm.

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Global Security Risks, Emerging Markets and Firm Responses: Assessing the Impact of Terrorism


Contemporary Issues in International Business

Luis Alfonso Dau, Elizabeth M. Moore, Max Abrahms

2018 The purpose of this chapter is to elucidate the various resiliency toolkits that emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs ) possess. As terrorism threats continue to proliferate globally, it is critical that scholars and practitioners identify ways to bolster resilience and enhance organisational performance. It is essential to foster a dialogue between the IB and resilience communities, because businesses are a primary target of terrorism. Perhaps surprisingly, there is scant empirical or theoretical work on firm responses to terrorism. This chapter offers a meaningful contribution by highlighting the strategies that EMNEs use to augment resilience to terrorism. We discuss firm responses to terrorism in the context of Mexican multinationals and in doing so, we provide insight into how EMNEs from dangerous locations manage to survive and perform.

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The More the Merrier? Immigrant Share and Entrepreneurial Activities


Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice

Chengguang Li, Rodrigo Isidor, Luis Alfonso Dau, Rudy Kabst

2017 We examine the relationship between immigrant share and entrepreneurial activities in a country. Building on knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship (KSTE), we hypothesize that immigrant share positively relates to the creation, growth, and export activities of new firms through knowledge spillover between immigrant and native communities. We further suggest that favorable attitudes of natives toward immigrants positively moderate this relationship. Using data for 32 countries from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, we find support for the hypothesized direct relationships and for the moderating influence of a nation's attitude toward immigrants. Our study has implications for KSTE and research on entrepreneurship and immigration.

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Global Economic Integration: The Impacts of Trade Networks on Firm-level CSR Signaling


Academy of Management Proceedings

Luis Alfonso Dau, Elizabeth Marie Moore, and Margaret Soto

2017 This study examines the effects of global integration on firm-level corporate social responsibility signaling. Building on complex interdependence theory and institutional theory, we propose that increased global trade networks encourage firm-level corporate social responsibility signaling, resulting from the heightened pressures of complex interdependence. Further, we argue that these global trade networks encourage greater signaling from state firms than private firms, because they increase the accountability of state firms to supranational institutions, whereas private firms are already accountable to the state and domestic institutions. Analyses from 11,990 firms and 153 countries from 2000 to 2014 provide robust support for the arguments.

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