Carlson School PhD student wins 2 Strategic Management Society awards
Exequiel Hernandez, a fourth-year PhD student in the Department of Strategic Management and Organization (advisers Myles Shaver and Aks Zaheer), won both the best PhD Student Paper and the Best Practical Implications Paper awards at the recent Strategic Management Society annual conference in Washington, D.C. He also was one of ten finalists for the overall Best Paper award. The title of the paper is “Immigrant Agglomeration, Firm Heterogeneity, and FDI Location Choice: Evidence from the United States.”
“I'm really grateful for the awards,” says Hernandez. “It's nice to get some validation that the work I'm pursuing is interesting to both the scholarly and the professional community. The recognition helps me have more confidence that one can do work that meets the rigors of academic standards but is also relevant to current global issues.”
In the paper, Hernandez presents how companies' common-nationality bonds with immigrants affect their foreign investment strategies. He suggests that companies–especially those with few alternative resources–can tap into the network of same-country immigrants to engage in foreign investments. He also suggests that business scholars and managers need to pay attention to cross-national immigration as a strategically important global phenomenon. Finally, the paper has some policy implications. Usually, governments discuss immigration and economic policy separately, but Hernandez finds the two discussions are related and should be considered together for a better policy solution.
