Dr Carole Couper

Dr Carole Couper

The Department of Strategy and International Business
Associate Professor in Strategy and International Business

Contact details

Address
Birmingham Business School
University House
University 麻豆精选
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Carole Couper is an Associate Professor in Strategy and International Business at Birmingham Business School, University 麻豆精选, UK.

Following an undergraduate degree in Chinese Studies in her native France, Carole’s earlier career began in industry where she worked as an international sales and marketing senior executive within the instrumentation and Food & Drink sectors.

Carole teaches on Executive MBAs and the IB MSc programmes in the areas of strategy, international business and international cooperative strategies, where she draws from her international research and international industry experience. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (now Advance HE).

Carole’s research interests include small firm internationalisation between institutionally-distant markets, and qualitative research methods in a cross-national context. She has published in the Journal of International Business Studies, the Asia-Pacific Journal of Management and Management & Organization Review.

Carole is interested in supervising PhD students in the following areas:

  • SME internationalisation
  • Cooperative internationalisation strategies
  • Institutional distance (formal and informal institutions) and firm internationalisation
  • Social networks in the context of emerging and developed economies
  • Relationship-building and trust development between Western and Chinese firms/actors
  • Novel methodologies and techniques for research that crosses institutional and linguistic boundaries

Qualifications

  • Associate Professor in Strategy and International Business
  • PhD in Management 2016
  • MSc Management Research 2011
  • Chinese Studies Licence (French degree/BA equivalent) 1989  

Biography

Dr Carole Couper joined Birmingham Business School on 1st August 2022 as Associate Professor in Strategy and International Business. She previously worked as a Lecturer in Executive and Professional Education at Sheffield University Management School.

Prior to entering Academia, Carole worked in industry in the Instrumentation, Life Science and Food & Drink sectors. Her experience as an International Sales & Marketing executive included senior roles within Scottish & Newcastle plc (McEwan’s Ale, Newcastle Brown Ale) and Diageo plc (Guinness, J&B whisky and Malibu Rum). Notably, she was responsible for managing the team tasked with the brewing under licence of McEwan’s 1856 - the first ever British Ale brewed in China – in partnership with state-owned Chongqing Brewery (Sichuan Province, South-West China). More recently, she has also worked as a Consultant for the Life Science sector, both in the UK and China.

Her undergraduate degree in Chinese studies, and her time in industry witnessing the numerous challenges encountered by British SMEs in their efforts to internationalise to the Chinese market, later informed her decision to engage in a PhD in Management (International Business). Her doctoral research explored how and why UK SMEs were able to develop internationalisation networks between the UK and China despite significant institutional differences. She graduated with a PhD in Management at the Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, and her thesis was subsequently awarded the 2016 Adam Smith Business School Alumni Prize for PhD Excellence.

Carole’s research interests revolve around internationalisation and networks that span distant institutional frameworks, such as the UK and China. She is particularly interested in understanding how smaller firms and individual boundary-spanners may manage and reconcile institutional differences in the context of internationalisation. Her current research is also concerned with the challenges of conducting qualitative research when studying phenomena that span multiple institutional frameworks and involve the collection and interpretation of bilingual – and cross-institutional - data. She has published in the Journal of International Business Studies, the Asia-Pacific Journal of Management and Management & Organization Review.

A French citizen and long-term UK resident, Carole has also lived and worked in Belgium, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Teaching

Carole teaches on the following programmes:

  • MBA Singapore
  • MBA Executive
  • MSc in International Business

Other activities

Carole is a member of the Academy of International Business and British Academy of Management (BAM).

Within BAM, she has joined the Steering Committee of the Research Methods Special Interest Group (RM SIG), and she is a member of the Executive Education Working Group (EEWG).

Carole has been invited to join both the Journal of International Business Studies’ and the Management and Organization Review’s Review Boards. She has been the recipient of excellent reviewer awards from the Journal of International Business Studies (2021) and the Family Business Review (2015; 2014).

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Couper, C & Piekkari, R 2025, '', Journal of International Business Studies.

Reuber, RA, Alkhaled , S, Barnard, H, Couper, C & Sasaki, I 2022, '', Journal of International Business Studies, vol. 53, no. 9, pp. 2147-2166.

Couper, C, Reuber, RA & Prashantham, S 2020, '', Journal of International Business Studies, vol. 51, no. 3, pp. 326-352.

Couper, C 2019, '', Management and Organization Review, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 307-340.

Prashantham, S, Eranova, M & Couper, C 2018, '', Asia Pacific Journal of Management, vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 1-9.

Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Couper, C 2025, . in H Barnard (ed.), Handbook for qualitative research in emerging markets: Methods and Applications. Research Handbooks in Business and Management series, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., pp. 148-162.

Chapter

Couper, C 2025, . in Handbook for Qualitative Research in Emerging Markets: Methods and Applications. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., pp. 148-162.

Expertise

Languages and other information

  • French (Native)
  • English (Fluent)
  • Mandarin Chinese (Fluent)
  • Spanish (Intermediate)

Policy experience

Carole has worked on the development of a policy brief at the request of the Conference Board of Canada on the internationalisation of small Canadian firms in fast-growth emerging markets: Couper, C. & Reuber, R. A. 2013. “Success in Fast-Growth Markets: Strategies for Smaller Players”, The Conference Board of Canada.

The briefing was then presented and well received at a workshop aimed at Canadian policymakers and entrepreneurs hosted by the Business Development Bank of Canada in Montreal.