Invitation to PhD defense: Eirik Sjåholm Knudsen

On Tuesday 18 November 2014 Eirik Sjåholm Knudsen will hold a trial lecture on a prescribed topic and defend his thesis for the PhD degree at NHH.

06.11.2014 - Ed.

Prescribed topic for the trial lecture: "Strategic behavior of firms in external crisis situations"

Time of the trial lecture: 11:15 - 12:00 in Karl Borch Auditorium, NHH

Title of the thesis: "Firms in Recession"

Summary

A surprising realization that came out of the recession of 2008-09 was that the strategy literature has very little to say on the subject of recessions and business cycles. The purpose of this dissertation is to address this major gap in the literature by investigating how and why the effects of recessions vary across firms and industries; how and why firms respond to challenges and/or opportunities created by recessions; and the implications of all this for competitive outcomes.

The dissertation consists of four papers that in various ways address aspects of these questions. The first paper investigates which pre-recession characteristics make some firms more vulnerable to recessions than others, the next two papers look at how the nature and/or magnitude of a recessionary shock affect firms' responses to it, while the final paper studies the relationship between pre-recession strategic orientation and firms' human capital responses to recessions.

In sum, the findings of the four papers indicate that the productivity development of firms, which ultimately determines their competitive performance, is affected by recessions in complicated ways. Drops in demand reduce firms' short-term productivity because capacity utilization goes down, but it also stimulates longer-term productivity by having a positive effect on investments in human- and organizational capital. Conversely, recessions, and especially problems with financing, forces many firms to reduce investments in R&D and innovation, which may create longer term disadvantages for firms having innovation as an important competitive parameter. Research in strategy shows that knowledge stocks are of primary importance for understanding competitive outcomes, so the variations in firms' knowledge accumulation documented by this thesis indicate that recessions may indeed influence competitive outcomes also in the longer term, and that economic- and financial shocks should be a vibrant area of study for strategy scholars.

Time and place for the defense

13:15 in Karl Borchs Auditorium, NHH

Members of the evaluation committee
Professor Karen Modesta Olsen NHH Norwegian School of Economics (leader)

Associate Professor Wolfgang Sofka, Copenhagen Business School

Professor Torger Reve, BI Norwegian Business School

Supervising committee
Professor Lasse B. Lien, NHH Norwegian School of Economics (leader)

Professor Peter G. Klein, University of Missouri

The trial lecture and thesis defense will be open to the public. Copies of the thesis will be available from: bib@nhh.no

Foto: Manøver