Associate Professor, General Management
Education
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Oana Branzei is the David G. Burgoyne Faculty Fellow, the Building Sustainable Value Research Fellow, and Associate Professor of Strategy at the Ivey Business School. Oana is also the convener and Ivey faculty for the PhD Sustainability Academy, a global event of the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability.
As an academic, teacher and consultant, Oana enables executives and students to successfully transform local and global tensions among economic, social and environmental issues into future sources of competitiveness. Oana explores the origins of competitive advantage with an emphasis on how social interactions and/or socio-emotional resources pattern the creation, capture, conversion and distribution of value. Her current initiatives explain how social innovation can help organizations attain and sustain competitive advantage at the intersection of markets and social movements.
She researches the social micro-processes of innovation across organizational forms (from manufacturing firms to R&D alliances and creative communities) and contexts (from clean energy to sustainable cuisine and ethical fashion). Her current research focuses on the pro-social functions of business, from social enterprises and cross-sector partnerships to global NGOs and multinational conglomerates. Her field work in Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, Rwanda, Uganda, Peru and Bangladesh among other settings documents the incidence and resilience of enterprise under extreme scarcity, adversity and conflict. Oana also researches the emergence and evolution of pro-poor business models in North America, Asia and Latin America. Her ongoing projects explore value creation and value conversions in hybrid ventures, global NGOs, and cross-sector partnerships.
Prior to joining Ivey, Oana taught in the Schulich MBA and the PhD programs, the Kellogg-Schulich Executive MBA and the Sustainable Enterprise Academy. Dr. Branzei was also a Deputy Director of the Erivan K. Haub Program in Business and Sustainability, and an executive member of the Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability at York University. She earned her PhD from the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia, where she was adjunct faculty and research fellow with the Forest Economics and Policy Analysis Research Unit, the Center for International Business Studies and the W. Maurice Young Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Research Center. Oana holds an HBA in foreign trade and international relations from "A. I. Cuza" University in Romania and got her MBA from the University of Nebraska.
Oana is a multiple research and teaching award winner, whose work has appeared in several leading academic journals, including Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Organization, Journal of Business Venturing, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Business Research, Business & Society, Organization, and Journal of Business Ethics among others. Her research projects have been supported by grants from Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, The International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and the Investment Climate and Business Environment Research Fund (ICBE RF). Oana also serves on the Editorial Review Boards of Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice and the Journal of Trust Research.
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