3rd. International Conference on Education for
Sustainable Development
ICESD 2017 Abakiliki Nigeria
WORLD CLASS SCHOLARS;
How Quality Research Can Catapult You
Workshop
Chris Ehiobuche Ph.D.
Professor of Global Business/Management
Larry L Luing School of Business NJ /NY
Berkeley College
USA

REFLATION
2
Individually reflect on interest in
teaching and an academic career and
what you’d like to get out of the
workshop
• Discuss with your neighbor
Describe your interests & goals
for the workshop. Make sure
each person talks
– Select some aspects that
you would like to present to
the whole group if you are
randomly selected

Workshop Goals
To developed your
personal vision and
philosophy for research
and publications
Use your scholarship
effort to create better
image for yourself,
institution and
country.
Improve your
research skills and
fascination
Understand how
quality research
can catapult your
career
Identify outlets for
publishing and
promoting your
work
Apply your search
outcomes to
problem solving
for growth and
sustainability

What is research?
• Active engagement with the relevant domain of
the world around us
• Leadership in thinking and doing
• Continual learning from, communication with,
and dissemination to others
• Unafraid to differ, and advocate
change/innovation
• But not pursue change just for the sake of
change

And what it is not…
• Publications
• Conferences, international or not
• Innovation and change
• Mathematics and data analysis
• These may sometimes accompany research,
but when pursued for their own sake, their
link to research gets lost easily

Why Scholarship

IMPORTANCE OF RESEARCH
• Research remains the primary avenue to individual and
institutional prestige
– Every university aspires to be ranked near the top of the peer
group: Research is what distinguishes them from others
(Pfeffer & Fong, 2002)
• Faculty reward system continues to be dominated by the
ethos of research
– Even institutions with self-proclaimed teaching missions
substantially increased the role of research in faculty hiring and
promotions
– Faculty were hired to teach but rewarded for research, even at
many self-described reaching institutions (Bennis & O’Toole, 2005)
– “Research remains highly valued in teaching-oriented
institutions despite their espoused missions” (Fairweather, 2005)
Why Scholarship ?

IMPORTANCE OF WORLD CLASS SCHOLARSHIP
8
Improve faculty
knowledge and
education
Promote
professional
excellence
Provide skills for
lifelong learning
Enhance
analytic skills
Develop critical
thinking
Prepare for
academia/
fellowship
Requirement for
promotion and
professional growth.

Who Benefit?
Scholars in
universities
Industry, business,
arts and scholarship
beyond the
university
The public (and
the world)
Publishers

Who Benefit
Scholars and
their sponsors
Educational
Institutions,
Governments
and Business
Organizations
Individuals,
Society, and
humanity
at large

Challenges to Good Scholarship

Gear Shapes Brain For
Infographics
Scholarship of
Application
Scholarship
of Synthesis
Scholarship of
Integration
Types of Scholarship
Scholarship of
Teaching
Scholarship
of Discovery

Scholarship of
Publications
Scholarship of
Teaching
Scholarship of
Discovery
Scholarship of
Applications
Scholarship of
Synthesis
To influence directly or
indirectly what is thought
and how is taught about
Africa
Research on issues and
facts about Africa with an
open Research mind
Find out how knowledge Practice
and Technology can be
responsibility apply to
consequential problems of Africa
Finding connections across disciplines
and filthy research into Africa’s larger
Knowledge
Awareness
Interest
Positive Image
Teaching publications books
journals documentaries, mo
social media images, confere
symposium, exhibition et

Elements of World Class Scholarship
Conclusions
and
contributions
Analysis
and
interpretati
on
Technique
s
Metho
d
Desig
n

Generic Research Process

Levels of Education Inquiry
Source: Streveler, R., Borrego, M. and Smith, K.A. 2007. Moving from the “Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” to
“Educational Research:” An Example from Engineering. Improve the Academy, Vol. 25, 139-149.
• Level 0 Teacher
– Teach as taught
• Level 1 Effective Teacher
– Teach using accepted teaching theories and practices
• Level 2 Scholarly Teacher
– Assesses performance and makes improvements
• Level 3 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
– Engages in educational experimentation, shares results
• Level 4 Discipline Based Education Researcher
– Conducts educational research, publishes archival papers

Exercise
• Individually reflect on your research interest and
how it can help your career
• Discuss with your neighbor
– Describe your interests & goals with 3 possible research
topics or existing cases for the workshop. Make sure each
person talks
– 1 or 2 persons should prepare to some aspects to present
• Whole group discussion

Conclusions
Drop backs
• Life experiences impact the way
people learn
• As students are getting younger,
faculty are aging
• Challenge for faculty to be
effective in teaching and to make
teaching and learning relevant
increases
• Scholarship aptitude is imperative

The Basic Features of Scholarly and
Professional Work
• The activity requires a high level of discipline-
related expertise.
• The activity breaks new ground, is innovative.
• The activity can be replicated or elaborated.
• The work and its results can be documented.
• The work and its results can be peer-
reviewed.
• The activity has significance or impact.Adapted from: Diamond R. & Adam, B. 1993. Recognizing faculty work: Reward
systems for the year 2000. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Conclusion Contd.
Ernest L. Boyer
• “Scholarship is not an esoteric appendage; it is
at the heart of what the profession is all
about. All faculty, throughout their careers,
should, themselves, remain students.
• As scholars, they must continue to learn and
be seriously and continuously engaged in the
expanding intellectual world.
• Don’t forget it doesn't hurt to be ethical

3rd. International Conference on Education for
Sustainable Development
ICESD 2017 Abakiliki Nigeria
WORLD CLASS SCHOLARS;
How Quality Research Can Catapult You
Workshop
Chris Ehiobuche Ph.D.
Professor of Global Business/Management
Larry L Luing School of Business NJ /NY
Berkeley College
USA

Scholarship of
Publications
Scholarship of
Teaching
Scholarship of
Discovery
Scholarship of
Applications
Scholarship of
Synthesis
To influence directly or
indirectly what is thought
and how is taught about
Africa
Research on issues and
facts about Africa with an
open Research mind
Find out how knowledge Practice
and Technology can be
responsibility apply to
consequential problems of Africa
Finding connections across disciplines
and filthy research into Africa’s larger
Knowledge
Awareness
Interest
Positive Image
Teaching publications books
journals documentaries, mo
social media images, confere
symposium, exhibition et

Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the
Professoriate Ernest L. Boyer
• The Scholarship of Discovery, research that
increases the storehouse of new knowledge
within the disciplines;
• The Scholarship of Integration, including efforts
by faculty to explore the connectedness of
knowledge within and across disciplines, and
thereby bring new insights to original research;
• The Scholarship of Application, which leads
faculty to explore how knowledge can be applied
to consequential problems in service to the
community and society; and
• The Scholarship of Teaching, which views
teaching not as a routine task, but as perhaps
the highest form of scholarly enterprise,
involving the constant interplay of teaching and
learning.

Impotence of Scholarship
Ernest L. Boyer
• “Scholarship is not an esoteric appendage; it is
at the heart of what the profession is all
about. All faculty, throughout their careers,
should, themselves, remain students.
• As scholars, they must continue to learn and
be seriously and continuously engaged in the
expanding intellectual world.

IMPORTANCE OF RESEARCH
• Research remains the primary avenue to individual and
institutional prestige
– Every university aspires to be ranked near the top of the peer
group: Research is what distinguishes them from others
(Pfeffer & Fong, 2002)
• Faculty reward system continues to be dominated by the
ethos of research
– Even institutions with self-proclaimed teaching missions
substantially increased the role of research in faculty hiring and
promotions
– Faculty were hired to teach but rewarded for research, even at
many self-described reaching institutions (Bennis & O’Toole, 2005)
– “Research remains highly valued in teaching-oriented
institutions despite their espoused missions” (Fairweather, 2005)

Why Scholarship ?
• Improve faculty knowledge and education
• Promote professional execellence
• Provide skills for lifelong learning
• Enhance analytic skills
• Develop critical thinking
• Prepare for academia/fellowship
• Requirement for promotion and professional
growth.

WHO BENEFITS FROM OPEN ACCESS?
Scholars in universities
increase visibility, usage, and impact of research
Retain rights to use and reuse research publications, including
derivatives
Industry, business, arts and scholarship beyond the university
Gain access to cutting edge research and new ideas
Fuels innovation, discovery, creativity and progress
Stimulates and guides public discourse and debate
The people of California (and the world)
Get a return on their investment and taxes when research is freely
available
Promotes knowledge and free expression as a public good
Libraries, K-12, educators generally
Gain access to the latest research
Creates a basis for better learning and teaching everywhere
Publishers
Reduced transactions costs in managing complex subscriptions
Doing the right thing with scholarly research

What is research?
• Active engagement with the relevant domain
of the world around us
• Leadership in thinking and doing
• Continual learning from, communication with,
and dissemination to others
• Unafraid to differ, and advocate
change/innovation
• But not pursue change just for the sake of
change

And what it is not…
• Publications
• Conferences, international or not
• Innovation and change
• Mathematics and data analysis
• These may sometimes accompany research,
but when pursued for their own sake, their
link to research gets lost easily

Why do research in universities?
• Intergenerational transfer of a massive storehouse of learning is unique to
human species: takes a couple of decades
• Universities were created to facilitate this social learning under adult
supervision
• Creating new learning is a separate function from transfer, mostly occurs
outside universities
• Combining the two functions in universities has some advantages

Why do research in universities?
• Problem of selecting adults who are tasked to
supervise learning of the young
• Psychology: adults interested in and excited
about the subject induce better learning
• Therefore select interested and excited adults to
teach
• Such people may also come up with new ideas
and share them
• Use new ideas as a proxy for good teachers

Why do research in universities?
• But it was only meant as a proxy measure to
promote better learning environment
• Sometimes, proxy measure takes over as the
principal: faculty pursuing research for its own
sake
• Teachers have advantages (specialization, less
bias) and disadvantages (remoteness) as
innovators
• With excessive emphasis on research, learning
can take the back seat and undermine the
primary function of research in universities

Support, promotion and evaluation of university research
• When many universities adopted research as a
secondary function of teachers, it was not long
before some sought to distinguish themselves by
raising research to the primary level
• It is difficult to publicly highlight good or even
great teaching, but is easier to do with research
• Competition among elite universities placed
research on high pedestal, and soon other
universities followed suit
• Support, promotion and evaluation of research
received increasing weight in university policies

Research Support
• In physical sciences, research support takes the form of
expensive laboratories and graduate students
• In social sciences: field work, data collection and
analysis
• But the most costly support is the blocks of faculty
time set aside from teaching and service
• Competition for government support consumes
significant time devoted to writing five or ten research
proposals for every one that might be funded
• Competition for industry support brings along
conflicting loyalties to students, common knowledge
base of the discipline, and benefactors

Promoting and Evaluating Research
• In the remainder of this talk, let us assume that
we have already decided that it is desirable to
allocate a certain amount of educational
resources to research
• Although there is plenty to debate about in that
decision, we shall not enter that debate here
• Instead, focus on: What might be an efficient way
of utilizing these scarce resources for promoting
society’s welfare?

Evaluation of Research
• Evaluation of research is inherently difficult
and problematic
• New theories that challenge the status quo
way of thinking can be right or wrong
• In judgment of others, they are almost always
questionable
• Who should assess research, if the
knowledgeable people in the fields are already
invested in the prevailing wisdom?

“Independent” Journal Review System
• Most academic disciplines have editors and expert referees to
evaluate research and decide on its publication
• This system is better developed in the U.S. and Europe than in
most other parts of the world
– Even there, the editors and referees cannot not reliably
independent (celebrated failures, to be ignored for now)
• Temptation to rely of journals published in these countries (often
called international journals) to evaluate research everywhere
• Rules for faculty appointment and promotion in Asian, African
and Latin American universities based on publications in
“international” journals

WHO HAS ACCESS NOW?
Scholars in (rich) universities
increase visibility, usage, and impact of research
Retain rights to use and reuse research publications,
including derivatives
everywhere
Publishers
Reduced transactions costs in managing complex
subscriptions
Doing the right thing with scholarly research

GOALS OF BUSINESS RESEARCH
• To enhance the prestige of the business school
where the research is done.
– Research has historically, been regarded as the
primary determinant of a school’s prestige.
– There is a significant correlation between the prestige
of a business school and a message of research impact
for each school.
– Business Week has now added a research influence
measure to its ratings of business schools
– U.S. News and World Report have incorporated the
research prestige of the schools in its rating of
business schools.

GOALS OF BUSINESS RESEARCH
• To influence, either proximately or remotely, the
practice of management.
– Business schools should be a major source knowledge that
directly influences management thinking and practice
– Indirect influence on management thought because
business research is cited and used by others, including
those writing more popular and accessible texts.
• Scholarship should also serves the excellent teaching
– Teaching and research are mutually beneficial

TYPES OF SCHOLARSHIP
• There are four distinct but interrelated dimensions of
scholarship (Boyer, 1990):
– The scholarship of discovery (research)
– The scholarship of synthesis (Integration)
– The scholarship of application (practice)
– The scholarship of pedagogy (teaching)
• Within such a wide variety of faculty work Boyer (1990)
called for teaching itself to become a scholarly activity.
– To view teaching as an intellectual act that contributed to
the transformation of knowledge
– To succeed as a disciplinary-based researcher and as a
researcher of one’s own teaching

TYPES OF SCHOLARSHIP
• The scholarship of discovery: Contributions made to the
body of knowledge in one’s field and “to the intellectual
climate of a college or university” (Boyers, 1990: 17).
• Examples:
– Published articles in a referenced journal, book or book chapter
– Submitted proposal which got external funding
– Peer reviewed paper presented at a professional conference in the
field
– Invited or reviewed public performance
• Faculty has much to gain and much to contribute the
advancement of teaching as a profession through such
scholarship.

TYPES OF SCHOLARSHIP
• The scholarship of integration: Contributions made to a
broader understanding of how current research and
knowledge expands what is known in one’s field and
beyond. Examples:
– Commissioned report for scholarly interpretation of students’
acquisition of business knowledge for college instructors and
administrators
– Report of developing a new models to make explicit the integration of
liberal and professional learning
– Publication, reviewed papers or public performance that gives
evidence of interdisciplinary thought
• “Teaching, at its best, means not only transmitting
knowledge, but transforming and extending it as well”
(Boyer, 1990: 24)

TYPES OF SCHOLARSHIP
• The scholarship of application: Contributions made
to apply knowledge to redefine and solve problems
in the external environment or inside the university
community. Examples:
– Development and sharing of software designed to research products
within the teaching environment
– Engaged in applied research with members of the community with
publicly shared outcomes
– Dissemination of the final evaluation of the AACSB accreditation
– Produced a task force report leading to changes in assessment
methods for a specific program
• How can knowledge be responsibly applied to
consequential problems” (Boyer, 1990: 21)

TYPES OF SCHOLARSHIP
• The scholarship of application: Contributions made
to apply knowledge to redefine and solve problems
in the external environment or inside the university
community. Examples:
– Development and sharing of software designed to research products
within the teaching environment
– Engaged in applied research with members of the community with
publicly shared outcomes
– Dissemination of the final evaluation of the AACSB accreditation
– Produced a task force report leading to changes in assessment
methods for a specific program
• How can knowledge be responsibly applied to
consequential problems” (Boyer, 1990: 21)

AACSB’S TYPES OF SCHOLARSHIP
• According to AACSB, scholarship consists of:
– Basic scholarship: The creation of new knowledge
– Applied scholarship: The application, transfer, and
interpretation of knowledge to approved management
practice and teaching
– Instruction development: The enhancement of the
educational value of instructional efforts of the institution
or discipline
• Despite of the wide range of faculty work and how
different the disciplines are from one another,
scholarship should increase knowledge and
enhance teaching

INTEGRATIVE FEATURES OF
RESEARCH
• Scholarship of teaching:
– Scholarship of discovery: Systematic & scholarly
inquiry into the nature of learning
– Scholarship of integration: Connections across
disciplines and fitting research into larger
intellectual patterns
– Scholarship of application: “How can knowledge
be responsibly applied to consequential
problems?”

SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING:
AN EFFECTIVELY APPLIED RESEARCH
• My proposed version of scholarship of teaching can
be called “applied research” and it draws
synthetically from other scholarships
• It involves all four forms of scholarship
– “It begins in scholarship teaching itself. It is a special case of the
scholarship of application and engagement, and frequently entails the
discovery of new findings and principles. At its best, it creates new
meanings though integrating across other inquiries, negotiating
understanding between theory and practice. Where discovery,
engagement, and application intersect, there you will find teaching
among the scholarship.” (Hutchings & Shulman, 1999: 15)

Major assumptions for such applied research
– Research should be grounded in
teaching environment and relevant to practitioners
– Research should illuminate the mysteries and ambiguities of
today’s business practices
– Conducting rigorous research without abandoning professional
missions
– Commitment to teaching and research in the broader and
multifaceted areas of business
– Business is not an academic discipline like geology or physics,
but a profession, similar to law and medicine, which integrates
knowledge and practice
• “A theory must illuminate and explain and, if it cannot
do those things, it is not a theory” (Ghoshal, 2005: 86)

• In the traditional research model
– Researcher defines the problem to be studies,
selects the appropriate methods, collects the data,
interprets them, and reports the findings
– The role of the research subject is to provide the
information the researcher is seeking
– Researcher is the expert on the problem to be studied
– The quality of research is judged almost exclusively on
the scientific credentials
– The results are reported in journal articles that are
generally read by other researchers, thereby
having no influence on the actions of business
practitioners

• In the applied research model:
– To strike a new balance between scientific rigor and
practical relevance/impact on management
– To discover the actual problems facing managers
– Involves question-asking, inquiry and investigation,
particularly around issues of student learning
– Inquiry into significant issues in the teaching and
learning and fully considering absorptive capacity of
students
– To change the status of the problem in teaching form
terminal remediation to ongoing investigation

TIPS ON APPLIED RESEARCH
• Having a “problem” is at the heart of the process:
problem-oriented rather than theory-oriented
research, focusing on the relevance of problem
– Link to the course content and embedded in the classroom culture
– Linkages between the topics of interests and the questions that we try
to formulate and solve
• Discover actual problems by asking questions:
– Is the research important and useful? Is it interesting or original? Is it
well thought-out, well argued, and well designed?
• Begin with a quite pragmatic question and provide
the context to this sticking point into an
opportunity for purposeful experimentation
and study

TECHNIQUES FOR APPLIED RESEARCH
• Rely on regular activities of the course, including
student papers/projects and the “ideas assignment”
– “one-minute paper” and short reflection paper
– Multidisciplinary issues and multifaceted questions
– Concentrate on more experienced students
– Using the literature
• Connection between concepts and practice
– Research question should relate to the context of the class and to the
particular subject matter
• Can be characterized by concrete examples or more
general, distinguishing features
• Open up new questions that, over time prompt major
new lines of educational research

TECHNIQUES FOR APPLIED RESEARCH
• Linking student’s absorptive capacity with the applied
research
• An organization’s absorptive capacity (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990)
is its ability to
– (1) understand new external knowledge
– (2) assimilate it, and
– (3) apply it to commercial ends
– Students’ absorptive capacity-related factors are the primary
constraints on faculty applying new knowledge and scholarly
outputs
– For the applied research to achieve optimal results, what
instructors teach/research and what students want to learn
should have similar enough knowledge bases and norms

ADVANTAGES AND BENEFITS
• As systematic or rigorous as other forms of scholarship, with
some unique advantages:
– A role similar to that of clinical research, which allows business practice to
improve
– The integrity of the discipline leads to a sense of what is best for the
students and also for the faculty
– Integrating the research objectives with the course content and
complements
• A win-win game: mutually supportive integration of teaching
and research
– With an eye not only to improve excellent teaching but to advancing
practice beyond it
– Simultaneously meeting faculty own and their institution’s professional
objectives

SCHOLARSHIP ASSESSED
• Research does not end with data collection and
there ensues a long period of analysis
reconceptualization writing and/ or speaking, and
dissemination of results
– “Scholarship is incomplete until is understood by others”
(Boyer, 1990)
• “Clear goals, adequate preparation, appropriate
methods, significant results, effective presentation,
reflective critique” (Glassick et al., 1997:36)
– “Scholarship of teaching occurs when faculty work
becomes “public, peer-reviewed and critiqued, and
exchanged with other members of our professional
communities” (Schulman, 1999)

OUTLETS FOR APPLIED RESEARCH
• The Academy of Management (AOM), the
Academy of International Business (AIB) as well
as the Strategic Management Society (SMS)
– The annual conferences of AOM and AIB
– A number of regional conferences of AOM and AIB
• Prestigious peer-reviewed journals which
balance “credible” methods of inquiry and
practical significance
– Business Horizons
– California Management Review
– Journal of World Business

• Business Horizons. A bimonthly journal of the
Kelley School of Business, Indiana University
• Description:
– Aiming to publish original articles of interest to
business academicians and practitioners
– Covering a wide range of topical areas within the
general field of business, with emphasis on identifying
important business issues or problems and providing
solutions
– Striking a balance between the practical and the
academic by prompting readers to think about
business practice in new and innovative ways
– The published articles are grounded in scholarship, yet
are presented in a readable, non-technical format
accessible to wide business audience

• Journal of World Business. Formerly
Columbia Journal of International Business
• Description:
– Publishing manuscripts that are broad in scope,
but demonstrating keen insights into problems
facing the professional practitioner as well as the
academician
– Recognizing the importance of contributions from
merging countries, manuscripts should have
relevant and concise theoretical foundations
– Translation academic findings to professional
practitioners seeking to improve their practice of
management in three areas: HR management,
marketing, and strategic management

ILLUSTRATIONS BY SAMPLES OF
DR. DENG’S SCHOLARLY WORKS
• “Taiwan’s restriction of investment China in the 1990’s”
article published in Asian Survey, December 2000,
pp.958-980
– This publication aimed to show that a relative gains approach has
a parsimonious power for analyzing why Taiwan authorities have
restricted otherwise mutually beneficial cooperation with
mainland China
– The research question is deeply embedded in the discipline of
international business relations, but turns out to be explained by
the multidisciplinary inquiry
– A typical example of scholarship of integration in that it makes
connections across the disciplines (business management,
international relations, and investment), placing the specialties in
a larger context and illuminating data in a revealing way

• “WFOEs” The most popular entry mode into China,”
article published in Business Horizons, August 2001,
pp. 63-72
– This publication aimed to explore the question: Why did
WFOEs (wholly foreign-owned enterprises) replaced EJVs
(equity joint ventures) as the most popular means of
entering China beginning the late 1990s
– The primary analytical method is to apply the major
Western theories to the specific context of Chinese business
environment
– A typical example of scholarship of application because the
Western knowledge is applicable into the Chinese context,
thus addressing the criteria: “How can knowledge be
responsibly applied to consequential problems?”

• “Outward investment by Chinese MNCs: Motivations
and implications,” published in Business Horizons,
June 2004, pp. 8-16
– This article aimed to raise the attention to the business
world and increasingly crucial phenomenon: the growing
importance of FDI (foreign direct investment) outflows from
Chinese multinational corporations (MNCs)
– Focused on the question: What factors motivate Chinese
MNCs to engage in huge amount of outward FDI
worldwide?
– A typical example of combination of the scholarship of
discovery and the scholarship of application: Through a
detailed analysis both macro and micro data, the article has
contributed to the knowledge in the global strategic
management

• “Resource-based view of FDI,” paper presented at
the 2006 annual conference of the AOM, August 11-
16, Atlanta, GA
– This paper focused on why Chinese MNCs have increasingly
invested in developed countries for strategic assets and the
rationale behind such motivation
– The primary method is to apply the resource-based view
(RBV) theory to their leading Chinese companies in terms of
their foreign investment behaviors
– Another example of combination of the scholarship of
discovery and application because the study adds value to
the RBV literature and also puts the RBV approach to a new
and potentially far-reaching application

• “Investing for strategic resources and its rationale,”
paper published in Business Horizons, January
2007
– Based on detailed analysis of both primary and secondary
data sources, this article argues that when investing in
advanced economies, Chinese MNCs are motivated by
seeking strategic resources and the rationale for such
asset seeking FDI is strategic needs
– It is an ongoing research investigation largely by
validating the managerial implications drawn in the
2004’s article with convincing evidences
– A good example of involving three forms of scholarship:
discovery, integration, and application: By synthesizing
the existing literature, asset-seeking perspective is
developed and used to explore the investment issues of
Chinese MNCs

• “Cross-border M&A from emerging market firms:
Strategic assets and absorptive capacity” paper to
be presented at the 2007 SMS Conference, San
Diego, CA, October 14-17
– The strategic asset seeking perspective has been
advocated to explain how Asian emerging market firms
become more globally competitive via FDI
– However, a critical question is whether and to what
extent that cross-border M&A can acquire such assets so
as to address a firm’s competitive disadvantage. To
address this question, I propose a model of how
absorptive capacity influences a firm’s ability to identify,
integrate, and commercially apply the strategic assets
that M&A may bring

• “Acquisition of strategic assets through M&A: An
institutional approach, “ paper accepted for
publication by Journal of World Business,
forthcoming
– As a latecomer, Chinese firms are more likely to use FDI
and particularly M&A as a means to acquire strategic
assets in order to enhance their competitive advantage
– Building on institutional theories, this paper proposes a
theoretical model of resource-driven motivations of
Chinese M&A at four different levels
– To shed light on the explanatory power of this
institutional framework, I draw a multiple case study of
three leading Chinese firms in the logic of Chinese unique
institutional environment

CONCLUSIVE REMARKS
• Scholarly approach to teaching can have significant impact
beyond classroom and achieve the synergy between pedagogy
and research
• Applied scholarship helps us simultaneously address both
research and teaching missions, with the potential of:
– Creating communities of research among scholars in the field and
connection with the global village
– Motivating professors to develop consistent research and teaching
methods
• With their absorptive capacity in mind, students can benefit
from gaining current research insights conducted in a more
externally valid context and eventually help develop their
critical thinking and problem identifying skills

• Scholarship of teaching is in a unique position to
achieve the three goals of business school
research, and that can be well demonstrated in my
personal scholarly experience
• My academic work has made headlines in the
world of academia and practitioners
– Frequently cited by articles published in prestigious
refereed journals (e.g., Management and Organization
Review)
– Approached by worldwide academic communities in the
field
– Invited by the UNCTAD to its seminar, critiquing the draft
of World Investment Report 2006
– Cited by both national publications (e.g., Fortune
magazine) and local media as expert resources

• Recognition from the University leadership
– “Congratulations on your remarkable UNCTAD and AOM
achievements which shine very brightly on Maryville.”
– “Both of these events give Dr. Deng and Maryville global
recognition. It is another instance of Maryville living up to
its vision of being a premier institution.”
– “Ping: You are to be truly congratulated on your
accomplishment(s). You bring glory to yourself but also to
Maryville. TERRIFIC!”
– “I wanted to let you know of my excitement in learning of
your recent scholarly success. You continue to serve as a
model for faculty scholarship at Maryville University.”
– “We have a real firecracker on our faculty. I would like to
hear from you about how we leverage this asset in
furthering the brand image of Maryville.”

REFERENCES
• Becker, W.E. & Andrews, M.L. (eds). 2004. The scholarship of teaching
and learning in higher education. Indiana University Press
• Bennis, W.G. & O’Toole, J. 2005. “How business schools lost their way?”
Howard Business Review, 83 (5): 96-104.
• Bensimon et al. 2005. Do research that make a difference. The Journal of
Higher Education (JHE), 74 (1): 104-126.
• Boyer, E.L. 1990. Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of Professoriate.
Princeton. NJ: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of
Teaching (CASTL).
• Braxton, J.M. et al. 2002. Institutionalizing a broader view of scholarship
through Boyer’s four domains. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers
(JBP).
• Clark, B.P. 1997. The modern integration of research activities with
teaching and learning. JHE, 68(3):241-255

REFERENCES
• Cohen, W. & Levinthal, D.1999. Absorptive capacity: A new perspective
on learning and innovation. ASQ, 35:128-152.
• Cross, K.P. & Steadman, M.H. 1996. Classroom research. San Francisco:
JBP.
• Fairweather. J.S. 2005. Beyond the rhetoric. JHE, 76(4): 401-22.
• Ghoshal, S. 2005. Bad management theories are destroying good
management practices. Academy of Management Learning and
Education (AMLE), 4(1): 75-91.
• Glassick, C.E. et al. 1997. Scholarship assessed. JBP.
• Huber, M. 2004. Balancing acts. Washington, DC: American Association
for Higher Education (AAHE) and

Teaching and Scholarship
in
International Business
By Chris Ehiobuche, Ph.D.
Berkeley College New Jersey
Questions???
Discussions!!!
Thank You!!!!!!!!!!