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A dual Canadian and German citizen, Andreas Schotter is an Associate Professor of International Business. He also serves as Ivey’s Academic Director of the CEMS Global Alliance Masters in International Management program. Dr. Schotter has lived in Canada, Europe, Asia and the USA and holds permanent resident status in Hong Kong. As an international business expert he helps executives and organizations understand the challenges and opportunities posed by the ever increasing turbulences in the global economy. He specializes in how to think strategically and drive the agile decision-making that will prevail in today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous business world. His current areas of endeavour include the development of strategies for business system disruption and investigations into boundary-spanning leadership capabilities in global organizations. Dr. Schotter’s research has been published in leading academic and practitioner journals including the Academy of Management Journal, the Journal of International Business Studies and the MIT Sloan Management Review amongst others. He has authored numerous book chapters, cases, and a book on strategic management frameworks. In addition to his academic work Dr. Schotter collaborates closely with leading multinational corporations from North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America on emerging market strategies and international leadership development.
Before embarking on an academic career Dr. Schotter was a senior executive with several multinational corporations in the luxury consumer goods, automotive and industrial equipment industry. He was the Asia Pacific Regional Managing Director for Bitzer International, a leading manufacturer of commercial HVAC equipment headquartered in Germany. He also worked as General Manager for Linde AG in China and in various executive functions for Volkswagen and the Lancaster Cosmetics Group.
Dr. Schotter holds a Masters in Economics and Business Management from the University of Kassel, Germany and both an Executive MBA and a Ph.D. from Ivey. Prior to joining Ivey as a faculty member in 2013, Dr. Schotter taught at the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Arizona, where The Wall Street Journal recognized him twice as a “WSJ Distinguished Professor of the Year.” A hockey enthusiast and passionate rower, he represented his native Germany internationally at Rowing World Championships.
Teaching
Global Strategy (MBA)
Ivey Global Lab (MSC)
CEMS Block Seminar (MSC)
Education
Master in Business Economics, University of Kassel, Germany
Abstract: The extant literature suggests that it is sensible to deploy a host-country national (HCN) general manager (GM) successor in the local-market-seeking subsidiaries of multinational enterprises. However, limited attention has been paid to whether subsidiary GMs come from outside or inside an organization. By simultaneously considering the nationality and origin of subsidiary GM successors, our case-based study provides a sharper theory of succession decision-making in the context of local-market-seeking subsidiaries. We demonstrated that the use of HCN GMs is not always the best strategy, and can even be the worst option because ex post opportunism may arise for HCN GM successors promoted from within the subsidiary. Using HCNs from outside the subsidiary can limit ex post opportunism but may entail a new bounded reliability issue resulting from identity-based discordance. Our interview data revealed a managerial safeguard, which we term ex ante socialization, to address this issue.
Abstract: We offer a novel view of formal institutions as a layer cake, suggesting a structural relationship between higher-level and lower-level institutions. In this context, inter-layer conflict imposes complex pressures on multinational corporations (MNCs). These tensions have become more rife amid the growth in global connectedness and the commensurate increase in the importance of within-country differences. Drawing on political science and economic geography research, we introduce regime type and the distribution of economic resources as conditions under which inter-layer conflict is most likely to arise. We leverage two caselets to illustrate inter-layer conflict and the novel response options MNCs can deploy. Our perspective advances the theoretical understanding of intra-national institutional diversity, laying the groundwork for future research at the nexus of institutional theory and global strategy.
Abstract: Managing multinational enterprise (MNE) subsidiaries is a core facet of international business (IB) research. A shifting reality on the ground has triggered concerns around the waning relevance of the subsidiary because the MNE and its structure and processes have become increasingly complex. Consequently, more decentralized, responsive, and fluid organizational designs are now at the core of IB research. Juxtaposing recent arguments questioning subsidiary research altogether, we argue that IB scholars can explore and explain complex realities in the contemporary MNE without unnecessarily restricting the breadth of the field and giving up links to established research and theory. We reframe conversations around inward- and outward-looking perspectives, providing a path forward that emphasizes the importance of embracing the subsidiary concept in research reflecting today’s complex business environment.
Abstract: At first glance, digital business ventures appear to face few impediments to international expansion. Since digital products and services can be delivered over the internet almost instantly to any country in the world, digital business models may seem to sweep away many traditional obstacles to internationalization. In reality, however, the timing and extent of internationalization among digital ventures is highly heterogeneous. What explains this variance among firms that might otherwise be expected to pursue global markets from inception? In answering this question, we extend and enhance emerging work on the internationalization of digital ventures through an investigation of 169 US-based firms that completed IPOs from 2010 to 2019. Our work contributes fresh perspectives and empirical evidence on why some digital firms find it easier to achieve international scale than others.
Abstract: Scientific experts have traditionally enjoyed high public trust, but their stock of social capital is eroding (Jacobs, 2020). This is particularly the case for management researchers, who are already viewed as elites disconnected from practice and the public. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated lingering concerns about using public resources for university education and social sciences that yield questionable social returns with obfuscated outputs, lack of timeliness and accessibility, and fragmentation, but it has also “changed science forever” (Yong, 2020): The post-COVID scientific enterprise demands responsible use of societal resources through fast-paced research, social embeddedness, and coordination. Management research is everything but. For management scholars, this means recalibrating how research is conducted, evaluated, and disseminated to society. This commentary briefly outlines some tangible pathways toward that end.
Abstract: The fundamental standstill of global business travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic has—at least for the time being—physically immobilized the most effective vehicle for collaboration in multinational enterprises (MNE), the global boundary spanner (e.g. Schotter, Mudambi, Doz, & Gaur, 2017). The objective of this article is to provide a critical perspective to the question, ‘whether the boundary-spanning model is crisis resilient or not.’ I specifically focus on the capacity of the boundary-spanning model to adapt to, renew or sustain itself in a global crisis.
Abstract: Research summary:
Digitalization has enabled firms with so-called platform business models to emerge in many sectors of the economy. By facilitating transactions between different groups of users (e.g., buyers and sellers), platform firms are disrupting industries around the world. However, little is known about the international strategies of platform firms, as research has mostly examined platforms in single-country contexts. We address this gap by integrating insights from platform research in strategy and economics—specifically the notion of network externalities—with internalization theory. We extend the existing typology of network externalities by distinguishing between within-country and cross-country network externalities. We derive testable propositions regarding the foreign entry modes of platform firms, their international strategic posture (multidomestic vs. globally-integrated), as well as foreign market selection criteria and market exit.
Managerial summary:
Many companies in the digital economy operate platform business models, which create value by connecting different groups of users, such as buyers and sellers. We examine how network externalities—the notion that a platform becomes more valuable to each user as more users join—influence the international expansion of these firms. We show that it is important to consider the geographic scope of network externalities, i.e., whether network externalities operate across national borders or whether platform firms have to create separate user networks in each country. The distinction between within-country and cross-country network externalities affects key internationalization decisions, such as how to enter foreign markets, whether to pursue multi-domestic or global strategies, how to select foreign markets, and when to exit from a foreign market.
Abstract: Over the past two decades, a growing body of research on human resource management (HRM) has analyzed the relationship between international HRM and institutions. This work has primarily been informed by two leading streams of theory—organizational institutionalism and comparative institutionalism. However, these two dominant streams have seen much juxtaposition, but little logical integration. Moreover, scholars have paid little attention to the dynamics of contextualization (more specifically, institutional development and evolution), which limits the relevance of extant research. In this article, we review the extant literatures and their intellectual origins and develop an integrative research agenda that emphasizes the multilevel nature of HRM and evolution under external institutional change.
Abstract: New ventures formed around purely digital products, face seemingly low barriers to international expansion. Their products are highly scalable and can be made available globally over the internet. But not all digital ventures pursue international opportunities right away; in fact, early evidence indicates highly heterogeneous internationalization trajectories. We develop and test (using IPO data from 169 digital ventures) a theoretical framework to explain this variation, emphasizing potential constraints resulting from (1) limited resource fungibility due to cross-border demand heterogeneity and (2) the need for non-digital complementary resources, which are often less easily scalable than a ventures core digital assets.
Abstract: Much of the rising international connectedness of city-regions has developed from MNEs’ replacing local connections with (superior) international ones. This often creates local disconnectedness that energizes the current populist backlash against MNE activities. We develop approaches to new IB theory addressing the interdependencies of MNEs and city-regions that we propose as a crucial avenue for future research. We contrast two generic MNE strategies. The first is the traditional one: the ‘global orchestration’ of resources and markets. We argue that it exacerbates local disconnectedness. The second, that we call ‘local spawning,’ involves engaging with the local entrepreneurial eco-system to create and renew local connectedness, diffusing populist responses. Some MNEs are better able to implement the local spawning strategy, due to industry factors like innovation clock-speed, and firm characteristics like organizational path dependency. Finally, we distinguish between disconnection, which is an outcome of MNE strategy, and global disruptions, like the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, which are primarily stochastic events. Addressing disconnections requires MNEs to reorient their strategies while dealing with disruptions requires undertaking risk mitigation. We present empirical evidence from city-regions around the world to illustrate our theory.
Abstract: Multinational enterprise (MNE) subsidiaries abroad are important organizations in their own right. They typically hold some of the MNE's most critical resources, and operate at the forefront of complex international environments. In this review, we identify and organize theoretical and empirical research on subsidiary management based on over 600 articles in leading academic journals. We develop a conceptual framework that integrates complementary streams of theoretical and empirical research with the subsidiary as its focal unit of analysis. In particular, we review six lines of research on subsidiary scope, practices, knowledge management, engagement with local market and nonmarket actors, performance, and individuals within subsidiaries. We highlight theoretical perspectives that have contributed to, and been advanced by, research on MNE subsidiaries. Based on the review, we explore future research agendas, linking the contemporary research themes with two main thrusts. First, subsidiary management is a multi-level phenomenon that would benefit from more microfoundational research. Second, subsidiary management operates at key interfaces of technology paradigm shifts, and of disruptions in the political and institutional environment. Research into the dynamics of subsidiary management would, thus, enhance our understanding of international business in a volatile global economy.
Abstract: The rapid development of emerging market firms and their foray into global value chains has attracted significant attention. In this perspectives paper, we draw on case studies from the automotive industries in India and China, to describe the coevolution of domestic firms and advanced economy multinational enterprises (AMNE) entrants. We first show that domestic firms that used catch-up strategies such as capability upgradation, investments into internal R&D and globalization through mergers & acquisitions have managed to succeed in local markets as well as climb into global value chains. We next illustrate that the strategy adopted by the most successful AMNEs involves combining the formation of vertical partnerships with local sub-assembly suppliers and horizontal collaborations with local network orchestrators. Simultaneously weaving together embeddedness in these two cortical sides of the local business eco-system on the one hand and within its global corporate value chain networks on the other – generates a “double helix” effect, whereby its local and global capabilities reinforce each other. The double helix improves cost competitiveness and pushes the product innovative envelope in both local and global markets.
Abstract: We show how the initial subnational entry location of foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs) in China influences their subsequent within-country location choices and expansion speed. We distinguish between MNEs that establish their first subsidiary in co-ethnic coresdense agglomerations of other firms from the same country of originand MNEs that locate their first subsidiary in the periphery, i.e., outside of these co-ethnic cores. To identify co-ethnic cores in China, we employ a geo-visualization methodology, which draws the boundaries of cores organically and dynamically over time. We contrast our findings with the prevailing approach of using static administrative boundaries for identifying agglomerations. Our results provide evidence of path dependency, in that (a) entry through subnational locations with strong co-ethnic communities is followed by expansion into other locations where co-ethnic communities are present, and that (b) entry through co-ethnic communities accelerates the pace at which MNEs establish additional subsidiaries in China. We also find that co-ethnic community effects continue to influence within-country MNE activities over time, despite a host of economic, institutional, and investment developments.
Abstract: This research examines region-bound headquarters disaggregation in multinational enterprises (MNEs). We link the formation of regional management centersboth dedicated regional headquarters (RHQs) and regional management mandates (RMMs) granted to operating subsidiariesto the complexity argument underlying organizational information processing theory. We demonstrate how different dimensions of complexity associated with the number and dispersion of an MNE’s subsidiary network in a focal region affect whether, and in which form region-bound headquarters disaggregation takes place. Additionally, we consider boundary conditions affecting RMC formation based on within-region experience, global MNE footprint, and between-region effects. Empirically, we utilize a large global dataset of Japanese MNE foreign investment for the period from 1992 to 2014, which allows us to perform longitudinal event history analyses.
