Speaker > Biography

Marshall W. Meyer

Richard A. Sapp Professor; Professor of Management and Sociology
The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Marshall W. Meyer is the Richard A. Sapp Professor of Management in the Wharton School, Professor of Sociology, and Associate Member of the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Meyer has taught at Harvard University, Cornell University, the Riverside, Irvine, and Los Angeles campuses of the University of California, and Yale University, and has been a visiting professor in the Faculty of Business Administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University, and the School of Business and Management at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Meyer was also a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in 1993-94.

Meyer is currently conducting two research projects in the Peoples Republic of China. One concerns the transformation of Chinese state-owned enterprises. Meyer and his team have conducted extensive interviews with senior managers of more than thirty of the largest Chinese enterprises including Baosteel, China International Marine Container, Haier, Legend, Pearl River Piano, Shanghai Auto, Shanghai Pharmaceutical, TCL, and Tsingtao Beer. Recent publications from this project include “Decentralized Enterprise Reform: Notes of the Transformation of Chinese State-Owned Enterprises,” “Managing Indefinite Boundaries: The Strategy and Structure of a Chinese Business Firm,” and “Which Way through the Open Door? Notes on the Internationalization of Chinese Firms.” A second project focuses on technology transfer and knowledge transfer in China’s high-technology industrial parks, Beijing’s Zhongguancun park especially. Interviews with more than 100 entrepreneurial firms in Zhongguancun park were conducted in 2004 and are currently being analyzed.