On the morning of November 18, at the invitation of the School of Management, Professor Guoli Chen, tenured professor and department chair of the Strategy Department at INSEAD, delivered an academic lecture titled “Strategic Leadership Research: Past, Present and Future” in Lecture Hall 214 of the School of Management on the Chang'an Campus. This lecture was the 25th session of the School of Management's 2025 Overseas Lecture Series, hosted by Associate Professor Gong Mijia, and was attended by faculty and graduate students in the field of business administration.

During the lecture, Guoli Chen reviewed the academic research on strategic leadership through the three dimensions of "Past, Present and Future." In terms of past research, he took the "Upper Echelons Theory" proposed by Hambrick and Mason (1984) as the core and introduced the classic frameworks of strategic leadership research. Regarding current research, Professor Chen focused on the frontier developments in the strategy field, highlighting key topics such as corporate innovation and corporate going global, underscoring the sustained popularity of strategic leadership in academic research. As for future research, Professor Chen focused on the impact and reshaping of traditional CEO roles by artificial intelligence technologies.

During the interactive exchange session, the attending faculty and students engaged in a lively discussion on topics such as the ethical boundaries of AI technology applications and the synergistic adaptation between CEO competencies and AI technologies. Guoli Chen affirmed the academic value of these topics and encouraged faculty and students to actively engage in research in related fields. This lecture laid a foundation for the School of Management faculty and students to deepen their research in the field of strategic management and also opened up new ideas.

(Written by Luo Tianle / Reviewed by Shao Jing and Zhang Shuang)

About the speaker:

Guoli Chen is a tenured professor, the department chair of the Strategy Department, and the Mubadala Chair Professor at INSEAD. He holds a Ph.D. in Strategic Management from the Pennsylvania State University. His main research interests include blue ocean strategy, innovation strategy, global strategy, and corporate governance. He has received multiple Best Paper Awards at the Strategic Management Division of the Academy of Management Annual Meeting and won the Emerging Scholar Award from the Strategic Management Society (SMS). He was also selected as one of Singapore’s most influential young professors. He previously served as the Program Chair of the Corporate Strategy and Leadership Interest Group at SMS and has served as a senior editor and reviewer for several top-tier journals. In recent years, he has been deeply engaged in developing case studies on Chinese companies, and many of his cases have been included in the collections of Harvard Business School and The Case Centre. He received the "Top 50 Bestselling Case Authors" award from The Case Centre. His research findings have been widely cited by international media outlets such as The Washington Times, Harvard Business Review, The Economist, CNBC, CNN, CFO, South China Morning Post, Financial Times, Forbes, and China Daily.