Dr. Gao is a Research Fellow of GBIC. He is also Associate Professor at Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba. He earned a PhD in General Management from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario. Dr. Gao had over seven years of industry experience as a marketing and sales senior executive in the information technology, food and e-learning industries in China before he came to the PhD program at Ivey School.
Dr. Gao is fascinated by the tension and interplay of business and society, and has therefore focused his research interests on the theories of organizations and strategy that involve issues of social expectations and ecological concerns. His goal has been to discover the implications of the interaction between competitive strategy and social expectations on strategy formulation, firm performance, and public policy-making. In this direction, Dr. Gao has published articles in Journal of International Business Studies and Organization and Environment. He often applies a longitudinal design in empirical studies and endeavors to disclose the underlying evolving pattern of important relationships.