Shih-Fen Chen

Professor Emeritus, General Management & International Business

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Contact Information

519-661-3039
Somerville House 2352
Contact By Email

Expertise

International Management
Brand Rights Allocation
Offshore Sourcing
Global Branding Issues
International Technology Transfer

Shih-Fen Chen is a professor emeritus of General Management specializing in Global Strategy at the Ivey Business School. He earned his BBA from National Cheng Kung University, an MBA from Michigan State University, and a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Chen teaches EMBA, MBA and undergraduate courses in Global Strategy. He also conducts case teaching/writing workshops for Ivey's Asian Management Institute. Prior to joining the school, he was on the faculty of Brandeis University and Kansas State University, and taught executive development courses in Taiwan and the US. He held several managerial and executive positions in business over a period of eight years before returning to school to pursue a PhD.

Chen's main research focuses on the institutional role of branding in facilitating inter-firm cooperation. He has developed a model that can predict the optimal allocation of branding rights between two or more specialist firms working together to serve consumers, particularly when the parties involved are located in different countries. His other research interests include cross-border acquisitions, international joint ventures, and offshore outsourcing.

Chen has published his work in the Journal of International Business Studies, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Retailing, International Journal of Research in Marketing, and Journal of Business Research. He has translated two books from English into Chinese. His comments and opinions have appeared in BBC, Boston Globe, Business Week, Financial Times, Globe and Mail, New York Times, Newsweek, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, plus many local media and blogs around the world.

Teaching

Global Strategy (HBA, MBA)
International Business Issues (MBA)
International Business (EMBA HK)

Education

BBA, NCKU
MBA, Michigan State
PhD, Illinois

Recent Refereed Articles

Sun, F.; Chen, S-F. S., 2017, "The Role of Entertainment in Economic Exchanges: A Governance Perspective and Propositions", Management and Organization Review, February 13(1): 121 - 146.
Abstract: While entertainment activities in private business settings (i.e., business entertainment) are widely seen all over the world, issues about their prevalence have remained unresolved in the literature. This study takes an institutional approach to elucidate (1) the governance role of business entertainment in economic exchanges, (2) the mechanism through which business entertainment plays this role, and (3) the conditions under which business entertainment plays a greater role to facilitate economic exchanges. Our starting point is that economic transactions are governed through a combination of market rules, legal restraints, and social norms. We argue that business entertainment plays a governance role by boosting the power of social norms to regulate the behaviors of economic actors. As such, business entertainment should be more prevalent under the conditions where social fabrics are dense but market and legal infrastructures are underdeveloped. This governance approach provides a common ground to accommodate the positive versus negative views on business entertainment advocated by two camps of researchers in management, economics, and sociology. It also offers useful guidelines for policymakers to regulate, and for executives to manage, this prevalent but often misunderstood business practice.
Link(s) to publication:
https://doi.org/10.1017/mor.2016.38

For more publications please see our Research Database

Experience

Professor and Associate Professor at Ivey (since 2006)
Assistant Professor, International Business School, Brandeis University, (1999-2006)
Assistant Professor, College of Business, Kansas State University, (1997-1999)
Several managerial and executive positions in Taiwan over an eight-year period