Dr Jill Juergensen
Academic and research departments
Department of Strategy and International Business, Surrey Business School.About
Biography
Dr Jill Juergensen is a Lecturer in International Business and Strategy at Surrey Business School. Prior to joining Surrey, she was at the LSE and later joined Henley Business School, where she wrote her PhD thesis as a scholarship recipient from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Jill specialises in teaching modules on International Business and Strategy at both undergraduate (UG) and graduate (PG) level.
Jill’s main research area focuses on SMEs, organisational learning, innovation and international business activities such as exporting and international alliances. Her work has been published in journals such as International Business Review. Jill also frequently serves as a reviewer to leading journals such as Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS). She received the prestigious ‘Best Reviewer Award’ for the International Management (IM) Division of the Academy of Management.
Beyond her academic contributions, Jill has prior experience in Finance (commodity trading) and Digital Marketing and continues her dialogue with practicing managers from innovative manufacturing firms. Originally from Germany, Jill has cultivated a curious and international mindset, having lived across Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Netherlands and UK.
My qualifications
ResearchResearch interests
My research is interdisciplinary, sitting at the intersection of innovation management, international diversification, evolutionary economics and behavioural theory. Notably, I consider in my research technological as well as organisational (also known as management) innovation, which is aimed at a firm’s practices and routines. This work is novel and advances extant knowledge in IB, as it focuses on how firm behaviours are dynamic and evolve, together shaping the interaction of innovation and internationalisation decisions at the firm-level.
I empirically focus on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) which represent the most common enterprise form in Europe and across the OECD, thereby contributing to economically important and socially impactful research. Understanding how particularly less resource endowed firms, such as SMEs, conduct innovation in a global - and increasingly challenging - context remains not only of pertinence to scholars, but also to managers and policymakers.
Research interests
My research is interdisciplinary, sitting at the intersection of innovation management, international diversification, evolutionary economics and behavioural theory. Notably, I consider in my research technological as well as organisational (also known as management) innovation, which is aimed at a firm’s practices and routines. This work is novel and advances extant knowledge in IB, as it focuses on how firm behaviours are dynamic and evolve, together shaping the interaction of innovation and internationalisation decisions at the firm-level.
I empirically focus on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) which represent the most common enterprise form in Europe and across the OECD, thereby contributing to economically important and socially impactful research. Understanding how particularly less resource endowed firms, such as SMEs, conduct innovation in a global - and increasingly challenging - context remains not only of pertinence to scholars, but also to managers and policymakers.
Publications
We conduct a systematic review of the relationship between international diversification (ID) and firm-level innovation (I), considering articles published between 1989 and 2020. The relationship between international diversification and innovation strategies is dynamic and complex, and recent evidence challenges the traditional notion that upgrading firm-specific advantages through technological innovation can be sufficient to guarantee international firm growth and performance. We develop a unified framework that integrates findings from extant ID-I research while also proposing new avenues for further research on topics such as: how firms deal with potentially conflicting ID-I goals, how underlying firm motives shape the interactions between these goals, and how new technologies and institutional dynamism increasingly influence the ID-I relationship. We also discuss how and why the new contexts in which decisions are made, together with the prevalence of relatively newer types of firms (e.g., those associated with global value chains, latest wave of emerging market multinationals, digitalized service MNEs), require a more modern conceptualization of the ID-I relationship. •We conduct a review of the international diversification (ID) and innovation (I) relationship, as studied since 1989.•Recent evidence challenges the traditional notion that (technological) innovation is sufficient for ID and performance.•Given new contexts and relatively newer types of firms, we require a broader conceptualization of the ID-I relationship.
We consider how the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged European small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the manufacturing sector, and draw suggests policy implications. The sudden onslaught of the pandemic has acted as an economic shock, and we consider how it is likely to affect different types of manufacturing SMEs. We distinguish between immediate effects, a result of the almost-simultaneous lockdowns across Europe and its major trading partners, and longer-term implications for both SMEs and the global value chains where they are inserted. In the shorter run, most SMEs have faced logistical challenges in addition to demand disruptions, although the severity has differed across firms and industries. We argue that in the longer-term, there will be different challenges and opportunities depending on the type of SME. Policy interventions will also need to be sensitive to the different types of SMEs, rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all approach. The policy mix will need to shift from its initial focus on the survival of European SMEs in the short term, towards a more structural and longer-term approach based on promoting their renewal and growth through innovation, internationalization and networking.