Charles Williams
Strategy and Operations
Biography
Charles Williams is Associate Professor of Corporate Strategy at Bocconi University and SDA Bocconi School of Management.
He has a strong interest in how people, structure, and experience affect the evolution of firms. He has studied how firms adapt their knowledge while expanding abroad, how executive movement through firms affects the likelihood of entering and exiting markets, and how entrepreneurial firms face the challenges of growth.
His research has been published in Management Science and Strategic Management Journal, and he has served on the editorial boards of Strategic Management Journal and Organization Science.
He teaches strategy and entrepreneurship at Bocconi and previously taught at University of Illinois and Duke University. Before earning his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan he worked in journalism and market research.
Latest publications
How Does Firm Scope Depend on Customer Switching Costs? Evidence from Mobile Telecommunications Markets
Management Science, 2022, vol.68, no. 1, pp.316-332
Rookies and seasoned recruits: How experience in different levels, firms, and industries shapes strategic renewal in top management
Strategic Management Journal, 2017, vol.38, no. 7, pp.1391-1415
Growing pains: the effect of pre-entry experience on impediments to growth
Strategic Management Journal, 2012, vol.33, no. 3, pp.252-276
Structural knowledge: how executive experience with structural composition affects intrafirm mobility and structural change
Strategic Management Journal, 2012, vol.33, no. 6, pp.681-709
Comparing evolutionary and contingency theory approaches to organizational structure in Designing Organizations: 21st Century Approaches
Richard M. Burton, Bo Eriksen, Dorthe Døjbak Håkonsson, Thorbjørn Knudsen, Charles C. Snow(Ed), Springer, pp.41-56, 2008
Transfer in context: replication and adaptation in knowledge transfer relationships
Strategic Management Journal, 2007, vol.28, no. 9, pp.867-889
Grants & Honors
Excellence in Research Award - Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi
, 2022
F. Gluek Best Paper Award, assigned by the Strategic Management Division - Academy of Management
, 2020