Eric Thun

Eric Thun is the Peter Moores Associate Professor in Chinese Business Studies at Saїd Business School and a Fellow of Brasenose College. His primary areas of expertise are business in China and international business. His research focuses on the dynamics of competition in emerging markets.
 
In his current research, Eric analyses how a profound shift in the geography of consumption creates both challenges and opportunities for firms. Emerging markets are the fastest growing markets in the world, but the price constraints of consumers and institutional differences within these markets demand new forms of innovation, design, purchasing, and organisation. The future success of firms, and the economies in which they are based, depends on their ability to meet these new challenges.

Eric uses an innovative combination of macro and micro industrial data to assess the strength of firm capabilities in different sectors and to explain why in some sectors Chinese firms are able quickly to challenge foreign firms but in others they are not. The research analyses how the technological characteristics of a sector, market demand, and government policy shape outcomes. Over the last five years, the sectors he has analysed include autos, construction equipment, machine tools, motorcycles, and telecom.  In each sector, aggregate statistics are supplemented with extensive firm-level field research in China.

In his early work he analysed how the institutional environment and government policy shaped the development of firm capabilities in the Chinese automotive industry. He published a major book on this subject in 2006, Changing Lanes in China: Foreign Direct Investment, Local Governments and Auto Sector Development and revisited the subject in a 2011 article in the Journal of International Business Studies.

He has also worked extensively on multinational strategies in China, the globalisation strategies of Chinese firms, and China’s integration into global production networks.

Eric received his BA from Princeton University in 1990 and his doctorate from Harvard University in 1999. After a year as a postdoctoral fellow at the MIT Industrial Performance Center, he returned to Princeton as Assistant Professor in the Woodrow Wilson School and Department of Politics. He joined Saїd Business School in 2005.

Areas of expertise include:

• Business in China
  • Industrial development in China
  • Chinese political economy
  • Chinese automotive industry
  • Global strategy
  • Global value chains