Wolfgang Messner

Background

Wolfgang Messner is a clinical associate professor at the Darla Moore School of Business and director of GloBus Research. Prior to coming to the University of South Carolina in August 2016, he was a professor of international management at the MYRA School of Business in Mysore (India).

Messner obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in informatics and economics from the Technical University of Munich (Germany); he also spent time as an exchange student at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (UK) and the Università per Stranieri di Perugia (Italy). He received his MBA in Financial Management from the University of Wales (UK) in cooperation with Open University Hagen (Germany) and Allfinanz Akademie Hamburg (Germany) and earned his doctorate in economics and social sciences (with a sub-specialization in customer relationship management) from the University of Kassel (Germany).

Prior to joining academia, Messner worked with Deutsche Bank (Germany and India, 1995-1999), The Information Management Group IMG (Germany and Switzerland, (1999-2002), BMW Group (Germany, 2003-05), and Capgemini (Germany and India, 2006-11). He co-founded GloBus Research in India, a niche consulting company, to help resolve international business and leadership challenges with expertise in intercultural collaboration, operational risk and change management. He has consulted, led programs and provided executive leadership trainings in big multinationals such as BMW, Capgemini, Commerzbank, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Ericsson, Hitachi, Infosys, McKinsey, Microsoft, Siemens, Thomas Cook and many highly successful mid-caps across industry verticals in Europe and India. Messner also taught as adjunct faculty at the Indian Institutes of Management Bangalore, Indore and Kozhikode (India), Royal Docks Business School at the University of East London (UK), Julius Maximilian University Würzburg (Germany), and WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management (Germany). He developed the India module of the Leadership Excellence Program organized by CIO Magazine, WHU and Hewlett Packard, which is now in its third edition.

Born and brought up in Germany, Messner spent three years in the UK and lived seven years in India before moving to the United States. His international education, global work experience and business school teaching experience in several countries have given him a unique perspective of the world of international business and make him a good fit for the Darla Moore School of Business, where he teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses on global competitive analysis, intercultural communication in global teams and the business case of services offshoring. He is a featured speaker in international workshops and conferences organized by BITKOM, GI EMISA, GMAC, IBC Global Conferences, IBM, Management Circle, Marcus Evans, NASSCOM and the Project Management Institute. He is a member of Guidepoint Global Advisors and the Academy of International Business.

Research

His research interests include managing cross-cultural teams, cross-cultural differences in consumer behavior and doing business in emerging markets.

Messner has an active research agenda which focuses on the challenges of managing international teams and the needs of practitioners in international marketing. He has authored four books and co-authored one more, and he was on the editorial team for three handbooks published by Springer and Palgrave Macmillan. His academic research has been published in International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Journal of Air Transport Management, Journal of Customer Behaviour, Journal of Global Marketing, Journal of Indian Business Research, South Asian Journal of Global Business Research and The Marketing Review. He received the Emerald Literati Network Awards of Excellence (highly commended) in 2014 and 2016.

Education

• Ph.D., University of Kassel, Germany, 2004
• MBA, University of Wales, UK, 1998
• B.Sc. and M.Sc., Technical University Munich, Germany, 1995