Professor John Child MA, PhD, ScD, FBA

The Department of Strategy and International Business
Professor of Commerce

Contact details

Telephone: +44 (0) 121 414 8322
Fax: +44 (0) 121 414 2982
Email: j.child@bham.ac.uk

Address: Birmingham Business School
University House
Birmingham
B15 2TT

John Child is Professor of Commerce at the University of Birmingham, UK, Professor of Management at Plymouth University, and Visiting Professor at Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Management, the Academy of International Business and the British Academy of Management. In 2006, he was elected a Fellow of the prestigious British Academy [FBA]. In 2012 he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Association for Chinese Management Research [IACMR]. His degrees are all from the University of Cambridge.

Qualifications

MA (Cantab)
PhD (Cantab)
ScD (Cantab)
FBA (Fellow of the British Academy)

Biography

John Child is Professor of Commerce at the University of Birmingham, UK. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Management, the Academy of International Business and the British Academy of Management. In 2006, he was elected a Fellow of the prestigious British Academy [FBA]. He has Lifetime Achievement Awards from the British Academy of Management, the Academy of International Business and the International Association for Chinese Management Research [IACMR]. He was also made an Honorary Member of EGOS [the European Group for Organization Studies]. His degrees are all from the University of Cambridge, and he holds honorary doctorates awarded by Aalborg University, Aston University, Corvinus University, and the Helsinki School of Economics (now Aalto University).

Before entering academia, Professor Child worked for Rolls-Royce. He then worked as a Research Fellow in the Aston Programme of Organization Studies before moving to the London Business School, returning to Aston in 1973 as Professor of Organizational Behaviour. He served as Dean of the Aston Business School from 1986 to 1989. He was seconded to be Dean and Director of the European Community’s management program in China in 1989-1990, building it into the China-Europe Management Institute, the forerunner of the China-Europe International Business School [CEIBS] in Shanghai. In 1991 he was appointed Diageo Professor of Management in the University of Cambridge and Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge.

He returned to the West Midlands in 2000 taking up the Chair of Commerce at Birmingham University. He has also been a Visiting Professor at universities in Brazil, China, and the UAE, most recently at Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou. He is currently a Visiting Professor at Aalborg University.

John Child has published 25 books and over 150 articles primarily in the fields of international business and business organization. His co-authored book Corporate Co-evolution (Wiley 2008) won the 2009 Terry Book Award of the Academy of Management. In 2013 he co-authored The Dynamics of Corporate Co-evolution, published by Edward Elgar which is a study of how China’s largest container terminal developed in relation to its institutional environment. Also in 2013, he co-edited Knowledge and the Study of Organization and Management – Building on the Work of Max Boisot. Oxford: Oxford University Press. In 2015 the second edition of his widely used text on Organization was published by Wiley. In 2019 he published a new co-authored edition of Cooperative Strategy (Oxford University Press) as well as a pioneering book on Hierarchy (Routledge).

Professor Child has been editor-in-chief of Organization Studies and Senior Editor of Management and Organization Review. He sits on the Editorial Boards of several international journals. His current research interests are primarily in hierarchy, organizational participation, and how smaller firms internationalize.

Teaching

MSc in International Business - International Cooperative Strategy

Postgraduate supervision

Internationalization of SMEs
New and alternative organizational forms

Research

Coordinator of a seven-nation project investigating the internationalization of SMEs, with particular reference to decision-making modes, sources of information and other support, and use of networks.

The contribution of organizational participation to the resolution of contemporary economic and social problems, and factors impacting on its sucess.

Other activities

Convenor of strategy and international business research seminars

Publications

Forthcoming

Child, John, Rudy Durand and Dovev Lavie 2020. Competitive and cooperative strategy. In Irene Duhaime, Mike Hitt & Marjorie Lyles (eds.), Strategic Management: State of the Field and its Future. New York: Oxford University Press.

Elbanna, Said, Hsieh, Linda and John Child 2020. Contextualizing internationalization decision-making research in SMEs: Towards an integration of existing studies. European Management Review, forthcoming.

Under review with journals

Child, John, Rose Narooz, Said Elbanna, Linda Hsieh, Joanna Karmowska, Svetla Marinova, Pushyarag Puthusserry, Terence Tsai and Lulu Zhang 2020. The functionality of networking links for internationalizing SMEs in contrasting contexts.

2020

Child, John 2020. Organizational participation in post-Covid society – Its contributions and enabling conditions. International Review of Applied Economics, forthcoming. https://doi.org/10.1080/02692171.2020.1774976

Strategic alliance research in the era of digital transformation: Perspectives on future research. British Journal of Management, forthcoming. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12406

2019

Child, John 2019. SMEs in emerging economies: Strategies, innovation and internationalization. InRobert Grosse & Klaus Meyer (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Management in Emerging Markets. Oxford: Oxford University Press: 495-526.

Child, John 2019. Hierarchy. Abingdon: Routledge.

Child, John, David Faulkner, Stephen Tallman and Linda Hsieh 2019. Cooperative Strategy (3^rd edition). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hsieh, Linda, John Child, Rose Narooz, Said Elbanna, Joanna Karmowska, Svetla Marinova, Pushyarag Puthusserry, Terence Tsai and Yunlu Zhang. 2019. A multi-dimensional perspective of SME internationalization speed: The influence of entrepreneurial orientation. International Business Review, 28 (2): 268-283.

Puthusserry, Pushyarag, John Child and Zaheer Khan 2019. Social capital development through the stages of internationalization: Relations between British and Indian SMEs. Global Strategy Journal, 11 (1): 1-27.

2018

Child, John 2018. Should your research deal with power? AIB Insights, 18 (2), 3-6.

Child, John 2018. Downward accountability. In Ciaran Driver and Grahame Thompson (eds.), Corporate Governance in Contention. Oxford University Press: 193-225.

2017

Child, John, Linda Hsieh, Said Elbanna, Joanna Karmowska, Svetla Marinova, Pushyarag Puthusserry, Rose Narooz, Terence Tsai and Yunlu Zhang 2017. SME International Business Models: The Role of Context and Experience. Journal of World Business, 52 (5): 664-679.

Elg, Ulf, Pervez Ghauri, John Child and Simon Collinson 2017. MNEs’ microfoundations and routines for building a legitimate and sustainable position on emerging markets. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 38 (9): 1320-1337.

Frynas, J.George, John Child and Shlomo Y. Tarba 2017. Nonmarket social and political strategies – An introduction to new integrative approaches and interdisciplinary borrowings. British Journal of Management, 28 (4): 559-574.

Karmowska, Joanna, John Child and Phil James 2017. A successful failure: The meaning of temporariness in occupational membership-based organizations. British Journal of Management, 28 (2): 213-230.

Narooz, Rose & John Child 2017. Networking responses to contrasting levels of institutional void: A comparison of internationalizing SMEs in Egypt and the UK. International Business Review, 26 (4): 683-696.

Vendrell-Herrero, Ferran, Emanuel Gomes, Kamel Mellahi and John Child 2017. Building international business bridges in geographically isolated areas: The role of Foreign Market Focus and Outward Looking Competences in Latin American SMEs. Journal of World Business, 52 (4): 489–502.

2016

Child, John 2016. Building the innovation capacity of SMEs in China. In Arie Y. Lewin, Martin Kenney and Johann Peter Murmann (eds.), China’s Innovation Challenge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 189-218.

2015

Child, John 2015. Organization: Contemporary Principles and Practice, 2^nd edition. Chichester: Wiley.

Luo, Yadong and John Child 2015 . A composition-based view of firm growth. Management and Organization Review, 11 (3): 379-411.

View all publications in research portal