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Eric Zhao

Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Strategy

  • eric.zhao@sbs.ox.ac.uk

Saïd Business School
University of Oxford
Park End Street
Oxford
OX1 1HP

Profile

Eric's research is cross-disciplinary in nature and sits at the intersection of strategic management, organisation theory and entrepreneurship. He is also Professor of Strategy at St Hugh’s College, University of Oxford.

Before joining Oxford, Eric was a visiting faculty at Stanford University and the Samuel and Pauline Glaubinger Chair of Entrepreneurship at Indiana University. 

Eric's Strategic Management Journal article, 'Optimal Distinctiveness: Broadening the Interface Between Institutional Theory and strategic Management' and his solo-authored book, Optimal Distinctiveness: A New Agenda for the Study of Competitive Positioning of Organizations and Markets are widely regarded as foundational contributions to the burgeoning literature on optimal distinctiveness.

His second stream of research focuses on how societal-level institutions, such as patriarchy, racial and ethnic segregation, religious diversity, and social class, shape entrepreneurial actions and performance, with broader implications for organisations’ role in addressing grand social challenges.

Eric's research has been published in leading management and entrepreneurship journals and is widely cited. He won the Academy of Management Emerging Scholar Award in Entrepreneurship in 2019 and the Strategic Management Society Emerging Scholar Award in 2022, making him the first scholar who has been recognised by top early career awards in both strategy and entrepreneurship.

Research

Eric is actively involved in four major research areas:

  • optimal distinctiveness
  • institutions and entrepreneurship
  • resources and resourcefulness
  • crisis and resilience

Please visit his personal website for further details.

Publications

The double-edged sword of exemplar similarity

  • Journal article
  • Organization Science
  • Majid Majzoubi,
  • Eric Yanfei Zhao,
  • Tiona Zuzul,
  • Greg Fisher
Strategy

International expansion and home-country resource acquisition: A signaling perspective of emerging-market firms’ internationalization

  • Journal article
  • Journal of International Business Studies
  • Jialin Du,
  • Eric Yanfei Zhao
Strategy

Going beyond optimal distinctiveness: Strategic positioning for gaining an audience composition premium

  • Journal article
  • Strategic Management Journal
  • Majid Majzoubi,
  • Eric Yanfei Zhao
Strategy

Categories and narratives as sources of distinctiveness: Cultural entrepreneurship within and across categories

  • Journal article
  • Strategic Management Journal
  • Karl Taeuscher,
  • Eric Yanfei Zhao,
  • Michael Lounsbury
Strategy

Multilevel optimal distinctiveness: Examining the impact of within‐ and between‐organization distinctiveness of product design on market performance

  • Journal article
  • Strategic Management Journal
  • Juan Bu,
  • Eric Yanfei Zhao,
  • Krista J Li,
  • Joanna Mingxuan Li
Strategy
See more publications

Teaching

Eric has taught strategy, organisation theory and entrepreneurship courses on undergraduate, MBA, EMBA, executive education and doctoral programmes.