The 16th Session of the Business School’s Excellent Academic Forum Lecture Series in 2024 Is Successfully Held

On the afternoon of September 18, 2024, the Business School held the 16th Session of the Business School’s Excellent Academic Forum Lecture Series in 2024 at the Conference Room 615 of the Main Teaching Building on the Xueyuan South Road Campus of the Central University of Finance and Economics. Dr. Li Jiatao, the Li Guowei Chair Professor of Business at the HKUST Business School, was invited as the guest speaker of this lecture. More than 20 people from the Business School, including teachers, doctoral students and master students, attended this event.

This meeting was chaired by Professor Lin Song, dean of the Business School. Before the start of this lecture, Professor Lin Song introduced professor Li Jiatao’s resume in detail. Professor Li Jiatao received his PhD from the University of Texas in the United States. He is currently the Li Guowei Chair Professor of Business at the HKUST Business School, director of the Business Strategy and Innovation Research Center of the Business School, and an academician of the American Academy of International Business (AIB). He served as the senior vice president of the Business School from 2013 to 2017. Professor Li Jiatao is an authoritative expert in international business strategy and currently serves as the associate editor of Journal of International Business Studies (a leading journal of international business) (2016-present). From 2009 to 2016, he served as the associate editor of Strategic Management Journal (a leading journal of strategic management). Besides, he published many articles in leading international journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of International Business Studies, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal and Organization Science.

The topic of this lecture is “Home-Host Disparity in Multinationals’ Environmental Performance: Evidence from Carbon Emission Reduction”. Multinational corporations often exhibit different environmental, social and governance performance in the regions where they conduct business operations. This research investigates how multinational corporations’ assessment of the prominence of this issue affects their regional environmental performance, with a particular focus on the differences between home countries and host countries in carbon emission reduction. The analysis shows that multinational corporations are more likely to reduce carbon emissions in their home countries than in their host countries.

After the sharing, with regard to the topic of Professor Li Jiatao’s lecture, the attending teachers and students actively participated in the discussion about research models and publication of high-level papers and so on, further deepening their academic exchanges.

The “Excellent Academic Forum” is an academic exchange platform established by the Business School to fulfill the mission of “contributing new management knowledge”, which focuses on cutting-edge theoretical issues and organizational development dilemmas in the discipline of business administration and the Chinese enterprise management practice, and brings together frontier ideas and innovative ideas in China and abroad, so as to explore Chinese solutions for China's social and economic development.