njfsi

Department of Strategy and Innovation

Nicolai J.
Foss
Professor


Room: KIL/14.A-3.69
Tel:
+4538152562
E-mail: njf.si@cbs.dk
Nicolai Foss
Presentation

Nicolai J. Foss is a Professor of Strategy at the Department of Strategy and Innovation, CBS, Honorary Adjunct Professor, Department of Marketing & Management, Southern Denmark University, External Chair, Danish Institute for Advanced Studies, 2020-2025, and a Professor II at the Norwegian School of Economics. He is a Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog.

Trained as an economist at the Copenhagen University (M.Sc.,1989), Foss his received his PhD degree from the Copenhagen Business School in 1993, where he was Assistant, Associate and Full Professor, before he moved to Bocconi University 1 September 2016. From 2016-2019 he was the Rodolfo Debenedetti Chaired Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Bocconi University, Milano. He has held part-time and visiting professorships at the Warwick Business School, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Norwegian School of Economics, Lund University, Luiss Guido Carli-Roma, ERC Rennes, and Agder University.

Foss founded the Center (later Department) of Strategic Management and Globalization at the Copenhagen Business School in 2005, and served as its Director/HoD until 1 April, 2015. He managed two CBS “World Class Environment” programs at CBS (2008-2015; 2014-2016). Foss has served as a panel member of the European Research Council and on the Board of Directors of the Strategic Management Society. Foss is a member of Academia Europaea, and a Fellow of the Strategic Management Society. He was the 2020 Chairperson of the Behavioral Strategy Interest Group.

Encompassing 264 journal articles, 109 book chapters and 26 books (edited as well as monographs), his work has been published in the Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Management, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Management Studies, and several other leading journals. He has published books with leading publishers, such as Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press. Many of his papers have been reprinted in research handbooks, and several of his articles and books are translated into Chinese, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, and Spanish. His research has been discussed in such outlets as Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Fortune, as well as on leading podcasts and talkshows.

His google scholar citations are 55,200, and his H-index is 113. He has been listed as a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher since 2018. He is currently the 11th most cited living business administration scholar worldwide. Foss was one of the founders of the Danish Research Unit for Industrial Dynamics and a co-founder of the industry-funded Center for Policy Studies, the most influential privately-funded think tank in DK. He was listed as the “best Danish economist” by the newspaper, Børsen, in 2013, 2014, and 2015. He has been a regular columnist at newspapers Børsen and Berlingske.

Primary research areas
  • Strategic management (particularly the resource-based view and micro-foundations for strategic management)

  • Organizational design (particularly as it pertains to knowledge processes, including open innovation).

  • Entrepreneurship (cross-country analyses; strategic entrepreneurship; entrepreneurship theory).

  • The methodology of the social sciences

 

 

Curriculum Vitae
Link to this homepage
www.cbs.dk/en/staff/njfsi
Selected publications

Youyan Chang, Nicolai J Foss, Shuping Li, Jing Xie,. “Compensation Peer Effects of Corporate Social Responsibility.” Journal of Corporate Finance (2025).

Caleb Bernacchio & Nicolai J Foss. “Reconsidering the Moral Dimension of Managerial Authority: A Review and an Integrative Research Agenda.” Academy of Management Annals, 18: 435-472 (2024).

Caleb Bernacchio, Nicolai J Foss, & Siegwart Lindenberg. “The Virtues of Joint Production: Foundations for Collaborative Organization.” Academy of Management Review, 49: 155-181 (2024).

Libby Weber, Nicolai J Foss, & Siegwart Lindenberg. “The role of cognition and motivation in understanding internal governance and hierarchical failure: A discriminating alignment analysis.” Academy of Management Review, 48: 244-263 (2023).

Christian Asmussen, Kirsten Foss, Nicolai J Foss, & Peter G Klein. “Economizing and Strategizing: How Coalitions and Transaction Costs Shape Value Creation and Appropriation.” Strategic Management Journal , 42: 413-434 (2021).

Nicolai J Foss, Peter Klein, Lasse Lien, Thomas Zellweger, and Todd Zenger). “Ownership Competence.” Strategic Management Journal: 42: 392-328 (2021).

Nicholas S. Argyres, Alfredo De Massis, Nicolai J Foss, Federico Frattini, Geoffrey Jones, & Brian S. Silverman. “History-informed Strategy Research: The Promise of History and Historical Research Methods in Advancing Strategy Scholarship” Strategic Management Journal, 41: 343-368 (2020)

Jay B Barney, Nicolai J Foss, & and Jacob Lyngsie. “The Role of Senior Management in Opportunity Formation: Direct Involvement or Reactive Selection?” Strategic Management Journal, 39(5): 1325-49 (2018).

Jacob Lyngsie & Nicolai J Foss. “The More, the Merrier? The Role of Gender in Explaining Entrepreneurial Outcomes in Established Firms.” Strategic Management Journal, 38: 487-505 (2017).

Nicolai J Foss, Francesco Rullani and Lars Frederiksen). “Problem-solving Behaviors in Community Forms.” Strategic Management Journal, 37: 1189-1210 (2016).

Nicolai J Foss & Libby Weber. “Putting Opportunism in the Back Seat: Bounded Rationality, Costly Conflict and Hierarchical Forms.” Academy of Management Review, 41: 41-79 (2016).

Publications sorted by:
2025
Nicolai J. Foss; Ambra Mazzelli / Bringing Managers and Management Back Into Strategy : Interfaces and Dynamic Managerial Capabilities.
In: Journal of Business Research, Vol. 186, 1.2025
Journal article > peer review
2024
Nicolai J. Foss; Tianjiao Xu / Advancing The Microfoundations of Open Innovation
In: The Oxford Handbook of Open Innovation. ed. /Henry Chesbrough; Agnieszka Radziwon; Wim Vanhaverbeke; Joel West. Oxford : Oxford University Press 2024, p. 611–622 (Oxford Handbooks)
Book chapter > peer review
Thomas A. Wright; Kyle Emich; Jone L. Pearce; Stratos Ramoglou; Neal M. Ashkanasy; Jean M. Bartunek; Sven Kunisch; David Denyer; Nicolai J. Foss; Peter G. Klein; Sophia Town; John Hollwitz; Chet E. Barney; Peter Harms; Timothy P. Munyon; Gerard Seijts; Erik W. K. Tsang / Advocacy and the Search for Truth in Management Scholarship : Can the Twain Ever Meet?.
In: Journal of Management Inquiry, Vol. 33, No. 1, 1.2024, p. 11-25
Journal article > peer review
Yuyuan Chang; Nicolai J. Foss; Shuping Li; Jing Xie / Compensation Peer Effects of Corporate Social Responsibility
In: Journal of Corporate Finance, 4.10.2024
Journal article > peer review
Nicolai J. Foss; Peter G. Klein / Do We Need a ‘New Strategy Paradigm’? No
In: Journal of Management Studies, 7.5.2024
Journal article > peer review
Peter G. Klein; R. Michael Holmes; Nicolai Foss; Siri Terjesen; Justin Pepe / Government and Cronyism : A Reply to Chalmers’s Comment.
In: Academy of Management Perspectives, Vol. 38, No. 1, 2.2024, p. 106-119
Journal article > peer review
Nicolai J. Foss; Peter G. Klein / Ideology and Organizational Dynamics : Clarifying and Generalizing Our Argument on “Woke” Companies.
In: Academy of Management Perspectives, 20.9.2024
Journal article > peer review
Nicolai J. Foss / Knowledge-based Theory of the MNE
In: Encyclopedia of International Strategic Management. ed. /Christian Geisler Asmussen; Niron Hashai; Dana Minbaeva. Cheltenham : Edward Elgar Publishing 2024, p. 254–258
Encyclopedia chapter > peer review
Bob Bastian; Nicolai J. Foss / Metacognition and Stakeholder Enrollment : Cognitive Frames in the Entrepreneurial Process.
In: Proceedings of the Eighty-fourth Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management. ed. /Sonia Taneja. Valhalla, NY : Academy of Management 2024, 1 p. (Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings)
Conference abstract in proceedings > peer review
Caleb Bernacchio; Nicolai J. Foss / Reconsidering the Moral Dimension of Managerial Authority : A Review and an Integrative Research Agenda.
In: Academy of Management Annals, Vol. 18, No. 2, 2024, p. 435-472
Journal article > peer review
More results... (total 200 results)
Research Projects
Outside activities

 

Year Name of contractual partner Type of activity
2014 - 2019 Warwick Business School Part-Time Professor
2020 - 2022 Berlingske Commentator
2020 - 2022 Norges Handelshøyskole Professor II
2021  Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Visiting Virtual Professor
2023 CEPOS

Advisory board member

2024 - 2026 Visiting Professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University Ph.d teaching