Professor Catherine Wang
Divisional Lead – Strategy and Entrepreneurship/Professor

Research area(s)

My research interests are in the areas of entrepreneurship, innovation and strategic management. Within these board research areas, I am particularly interested in how firms can turn strategic and entrepreneurial resources into innovative outcomes and bottom-line performance, using primarily quantitative methods as well as mixed methods. My expertise falls in the areas of:

• Entrepreneurial orientation and learning in different organisational contexts, such as small firms, medium-to-large organisations, social enterprises, ethnic minority firms, high-tech firms, and family businesses;
• The resource-based view of the firm and dynamic capabilities: conceptual development, empirical validation and practical application;
• Organisational ambidexterity: how firms explore new capabilities and exploit existing capabilities, and overcome success and failure traps;
• International research on entrepreneurship and innovation;
• Social entrepreneurship and its role in businesses, societies and communities;
• Corporate entrepreneurship and innovation, and business transformation. 

I have published in international journals, such as Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, British Journal of Management, Journal of Business Research, International Small Business Journal, Journal of Small Business Management, European Journal of Information Systems, International Journal of Management Reviews, and International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research. I have also received a number of best paper awards, including the MCB Best Paper Award, the Norbert Wiener Award for Outstanding Paper, the Highly Commended paper of the Emerald Literati Awards for Excellence, and the British Academy of Management 2016 Best Strategy Paper Award.

PhD supervision:

I have supervised a number of doctoral students to completion, and acted as external PhD supervisors in collaboration with other universities. Currently, I am interested in taking on new doctoral students in the following topical areas:

• Entrepreneurial orientation in different organisational contexts such as small firms; family businesses, medium to large organisations, and technology-based firms;
• Socially responsible and sustainable entrepreneurship;
• Corporate entrepreneurship and innovation;
• Entrepreneurial learning, unlearning and feedback;
• Organisational ambidexterity;
• Entrepreneurial opportunities and decision-making;
• Ethnic minority entrepreneurship
• The relationship between dynamic capabilities and entrepreneurship;
• The role of knowledge and absorptive capacity in innovation;
• Entrepreneurship and innovation in emerging market economies;
• International comparative studies of entrepreneurship and innovation.