Doing Business in Asia

Dr Terence Tsai is an Associate Professor at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) who has extensive teaching, research and working experience including at the University of Cambridge in the UK, the University of Western Ontario in Canada, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Hong Kong SAR, People’s Republic of China (PRC), and Shanghai Jiaotong University in PRC. His areas of teaching and research include Chinese management, international business, strategic management, strategic business simulation, cross-cultural management, organization theory, foundations of management and environmental management and sustainability. He is also a front-line scholar who has professionally interacted with various key stakeholders and immersed himself specifically in the Asian environment. Currently, Terence holds the position of Associate Professor of Management at the Department of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at CEIBS (Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Zurich and Accra) and the former Director of the School’s Case Development Center. He also edited the School’s first Corporate Social Responsibility Annual Report. Dr Tsai’s research has been published in top business and management journals and his papers have secured honours in several international management and international business conferences. Terence has also been a member of several academic and industrial committees and editorial boards across Asia, including Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and in the US. His most recent research projects include ‘SINET’ (the Small and Medium-sized Enterprises International Network), which investigates the challenges and opportunities that SMEs face when they expand their business abroad. The research has been built on data collected from interviews with 30 SMEs in nine countries: China, Denmark, Egypt, India, Jordan, Poland, Taiwan, UAE and the UK. Some research outcomes of this project have been published in the International Business Review and Journal of World Business. Terence also initiated a research project on how digital platforms revolutionarily changed the ways of doing business and the traditional value creation model. This in-process research project ‘Digital Platform Economy’ will examine successful digital platforms in China, which include some of the world’s leading platforms in terms of business models innovation and profit generating, and to generate practical insights for both traditional and digitized businesses. Dr Tsai has also developed a great number of award-winning case studies based on his real-world business experience and close observation and business advisory services. These case studies have been used for EMBA or equivalent level of executive education purposes and been published in leading practitioner-oriented journals or incorporated into series of books. Besides his current academic activities in China, Terence also served as a member of the Board of Directors at the International Schools of Business Management (London, UK), the Senior Consultant at the International Business Ethics Institute (Washington DC, USA), the Senior Partner at MZ & Partners (Shanghai, PRC) where he offers expert advices in areas such as strategic consulting and policy analysis.

Dr Sumati Varma is an Associate Professor at the Department of Commerce, University of Delhi. She has 30 years’ experience of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, including positions as visiting faculty at leading business schools in India such as the Faculty of Management Studies (FMS), the Delhi School of Economics and the Department of Financial Studies, Delhi University, for their MBA programmes. Sumati was awarded the prestigious International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) fellowship in 2011 by the US Department of State for her contribution to curriculum development for the first ever programme on ‘American Studies for Indian Universities’ introduced in different Indian universities. She has worked as a consultant with the World Bank, and has contributed to its flagship publication Investing Across Borders (2012). Sumati is a prolific author – she has seven books to her credit in different areas of international business published by Pearson International. She has also contributed as co-author in the international edition of Money, Banking, and the Financial Systems(with R. Glenn Hubbard, 2nd edn, Pearson), to the Horizon edition of International Business(with J.J Wild and K.L. Wild, 6th edn, Pearson) and as adaptation author for the global edition of Preparing Effective Business Plans: An Entrepreneurial Approach(Bruce R. Barringer, Pearson International, 2nd edn). She has over 30 papers published in reputed national and international journals such as Journal of East West Business, Asia Pacific Business Review, International Journal of Emerging Markets, Transnational Corporation Review, Decision, and International Journal of Technology Learning and Change. She has been a member of the executive team for Project X-Culture (2015–2019), an international experiential learning project at the University of North Carolina, involving over 10,000 students from 400 universities across 40 countries. She is also a member of the Research Team of Lab ReTMES (Research Team for Mediterranean Entrepreneurship and Startups), Department of Law and Economics, Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria, Italy. Dr Varma has contributed to the content development of the e-PG Pathshala project under NMEICT, Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD), India. She is also a consultant in curriculum development at the American Centre and at the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), a nodal agency for curriculum development of Indian schools. Her research interests include born global firms, where she has done pioneering work in the Indian context. She is also interested in various facets of firm internationalization, international entrepreneurship and cross-border M&As. She has also presented papers in national and international conferences of repute, including the Academy of International Business (AIB), AIB India chapter, UNU MERIT Netherlands, Copenhagen Business School, European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) and Asia Pacific Researchers in Organization Studies (APROS).