New Faculty Spotlight: Understanding International Leaders

Born in France, Yannick Thams, Ph.D., grew up on a small Caribbean island, called Guadeloupe, with a family of entrepreneurs. Her father was one of those entrepreneurs and founded a printing shop with no capital. To her, he was an inspiration for successful international business and strategy.

With a desire to earn her bachelor's degree, Thams came to the U.S. to study general management in South Carolina. After graduating, her love for the Caribbean and her passion to be close to a diverse city led her to Miami to earn a master's degree and doctorate in international business from Florida International University.

Once Thams graduated, she saw that many businesses were going abroad and that there was a need to understand how CEOs operate in an international business. This need gave her the opportunity to continue developing her research in diversity and international business. She spent seven years doing just that as an associate professor of international business at Suffolk University in Boston.

Today, that same desire to be closer to her Caribbean culture and to a place that is full of diversity encouraged Thams to embark on a new journey and pursue her research at FAU. Now, she is an associate professor in the department of management program in the College of Business. Thams also sits on the editorial review board for academic journals such as the Small Business Economics and the Journal of International Business Studies.

"I am passionate about everything international which makes me very excited to be back in South Florida, a place that I called home in the U.S., and I am very thrilled to be a part of FAU because I know my research can thrive in such a diverse environment," she said.

Here's a look at Yannick's research and her journey to FAU:

Q: What is your research focus?

A: My work lies at the intersection of international business and strategy. In a broad sense, I examine the experiences and characteristics of the top leaders of companies operating in multiple countries, called multinationals, and what their backgrounds bring to the table from a strategic standpoint. In several publications, I've tackled three fundamental research questions, why do multinationals select CEOs with particular backgrounds, why do corporate boards of multinationals look the way they do and what does board diversity bring to the table that have received a great deal of attention in the popular press.

Q: Why do you have an interest in this research?

A: I am sure that many factors such as personal interests, life and professional experiences could explain my research focus. The coursework of my doctorate program inspired me to study the corporate elite, such as CEOs. I was also fortunate that my program's coursework was multi-disciplinary. Despite the program's international business focus, I took courses in organizational behavior, organizational theory and cross-cultural management. It occurred to me that my field tended to treat corporations as one single large entity. But ultimately, top executives and boards of directors are responsible for making critical decisions regarding a firm's global strategy, which piqued my interest. I decided to research what top leaders and their background bring to multinational companies, from a strategic standpoint because research has shown that the background of a CEO has played a major role when working for a multinational company. Their past can heavily impact the direction of a company.

Q: What do you want people to know about your research?

A: Decades of research of global strategy have explained firms' decisions to internationalize and the ability to succeed abroad by pinpointing a host of economic factors. In my research, I depart from economically focused models of internationalization. I participate in the conversation that aims at showing the complexity and idiosyncrasies of firms' strategic decision-making process. For example, my recent work sought to bring to light the importance of political ideology in shaping a firms' patterns. Recently, I've found that conservative firms tend to pursue less risky internationalization strategies.

Q: Do you have any advice for becoming a researcher in your field?

A: I would say that conducting academic research is about patience, asking for feedback, hard work, consistency and being passionate.

I have decided to follow the advice of a scholar in my field who advised me to open my manuscript every day, even for just 10 minutes. Consistent work on a paper is crucial to mature an idea and improve one's productivity.

Humility is also part of the equation since obtaining feedback from peers is of great help. Bouncing research ideas with my colleagues and peers has been particularly valuable and helps deal with the ambiguity associated with many steps of the research process. When I started my doctorate program, the chair of my department told me that a key success factor in this profession is tolerance for ambiguity. I did not totally grasp the meaning of this conversation at the time, but over the years, this notion has resonated with me given the intellectual challenge inherent in conducting research, which makes our profession gratifying.

Q: Where do you see your research continuing in the future?

A: My latest work focuses on the analysis of big data in the realm of political donations made by U.S. publicly traded firms, their employees and top executives to explore the link between political ideology and corporate decision making. I have worked for the past few months on building a new longitudinal dataset of millions of donation records of publicly traded firms.