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Areas of expertise
Biography
Dr. William Degbey currently teaches international business courses at the University of Turku, Finland.
He has recently held a visiting scholar position at Stanford University, USA. William holds a doctor of science degree in economics and business administration from the University of Turku, Finland.
He has previously worked in the financial services sector, specifically in mutual fund management (Ghana) and in the mobile telecommunication sector in Nokia (Finland). William has been consulted on trade development and competitiveness matters in Africa (e.g. Ghana and Tanzania), and also participated in invited Finland-Ghana Bilateral discussions on higher education (with the Minister of Education from Ghana, Ambassador of Finland for West Africa and other representatives) and symposium on Finland-Ghana Business and Investment organized by the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Education and Culture in conjunction with the Embassy of Ghana.
He has also performed several consortium project assignments on mergers and acquisitions (M&As), and joint ventures, including Academy of Finland funded projects, and the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (TEKES) projects.
His current research projects involving other international collaborators include post-M&A value creation in African M&As, customer and employee retention, business and diaspora networks, resilience in teams, and organizational ambidexterity.
His articles have been published/forthcoming in Industrial Marketing Management, International Journal of Human Resource Management (IJHRM), Human Resource Management Review, Thunderbird International Business Review, Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, Management Research Review, and other outlets.
Teaching
William currently teaches core international business modules, which he has designed, planned, taught and graded to over 380 students annually on both regular classroom and virtual bases.
Previously, he has also taught international business courses in the Turku University of Applied Sciences (Finland) at the bachelor and MBA levels.
William supervises bachelor, master (executive master) and doctoral thesis works.
The use of educational technologies is central to his teaching and thesis supervision. William uses educational technologies such as Moodle and other E-learning platforms, and thus involve students in group discussions, problem-solving and decision-making projects with the objective to help them develop social skills as well as domain-specific expertise.
He has also completed University Pedagogical studies including "Educating Adults and Teaching at University" and "How to Plan my Teaching".
Overall, William's teaching and supervision involve facilitating the process of learning through interaction, collaboration, and via group and individual tasks outside or inside the classroom and the virtual environment.
Research
William's research interests include cross-border M&A, post-M&A integration, customer retention, business networks, resilience, emotion in M&A, employee retention, psychological ownership and development economics, with particular interest in contexts such as emerging economies, maritime sector and knowledge-intensive firms.
He currently leads research projects including scholars from Finnish Universities and other Universities, e.g. University of Queensland (Australia), University of Birmingham (UK), Lancaster University (UK), University of Leeds (UK) and Florida Atlantic University (USA).
Some of his recently completed projects involved two major M&A-related projects including Finnish companies such as Outokumpu, Kemira, Cargotec and Ruukki, and partly supported financially by Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (TEKES) (i.e., Project on Managing the M&A Process), and Academy of Finland (i.e., Consortium Project on Value Creation in International Growth – Focus on Acquisitions and Joint Ventures).
His research output has contributed to the field of International Business, Marketing and Strategic Management, and has appeared or forthcoming in such journals as Industrial Marketing Management, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Thunderbird International Business Review, Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, Human Resource Management Review, Management Research Review, and also published as edited book chapters by Palgrave Macmillan, Springer and Emerald publishing limited.