Tao Zou of King’s College London was a recipient of the 2025 Will D. Mitchell Dissertation Research Grant program. Learn more about Tao’s work:
What is your research question/topic?
The smartphone in your pocket, the car you drive, and the clothes you wear nearly all emerge from intricate global value chains where design, marketing, manufacturing, and distribution span multiple countries. Today, rising tensions between the US and China are disrupting these networks, and firms are developing strategies about whether and how to relocate operations out of China.
My research explores this unfolding transformation. I examine how firms choose between staying put, moving operations back home, or diversifying into “friendly” third countries. I trace how these moves ripple through buyer-supplier networks, reshaping long-standing business relationships. I also investigate how multinational enterprise strategies influence local and regional institutions.
What emerges is a story of mutual adaptation: firms and governments learning from each other, co-evolving in response to an uncertain world. Understanding this dynamic is essential for navigating the next era of globalization.
What are you hoping to accomplish through your research?
The work I am tackling does not fit neatly into any single academic box. Understanding how firms relocate under geopolitical pressure requires thinking like a global strategist, an international economist, and an economic geographer all at once. I hope my work can show what it looks like when these perspectives come together, not as separate chapters, but as one integrated story, encouraging fellow scholars to transcend single-field thinking and contributing to the growing calls for interdisciplinary integration across our communities.
Through this integration, I aim to develop a more complete analytical framework that can speak to both scholars and practitioners. Corporate leaders are making relocation decisions right now, often with incomplete information. Policymakers are designing investment and trade frameworks without fully understanding how firms will respond. If I can produce insights that help both groups navigate this uncertainty, that would be meaningful to the whole society.
Ultimately, I hope to demonstrate that our field’s insights on firm strategy under uncertainty have much to offer and much to learn from neighboring disciplines. I envision my work contributing to conversations not only within SMS and AIB but also engaging communities in economics, regional studies, and development studies, where questions of regional development, trade policy, and geopolitical economy are equally pressing.
What impact could this research have more broadly on the field of strategic management?
This research extends global strategy scholarship through the examination of reshoring strategies under geopolitical uncertainty. By conceptualizing firms as portfolios of staged, interacting options rather than static resource bundles, my work proves valuable for explaining firm strategy and institutional dynamics under geopolitical uncertainty, offering strategic management scholars a framework better suited to contemporary challenges where radical uncertainty is the norm rather than the exception.
More broadly, as global value chains continue to fragment along geopolitical lines, understanding the strategic logic behind firms’ location decisions becomes increasingly consequential. The findings can inform both corporate strategists navigating supply chain reconfiguration and policymakers designing investment and trade frameworks. The third-party perspective offers insights distinct from research anchored in either major power, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of how geopolitics reshapes global strategy.
What SMS resources (members, workshops, events, etc.) were helpful to you during the application process?
I could not have developed this work without the SMS community. The Global Strategy Interest Group became my window into the field. Their updates kept me connected to conversations I might otherwise have missed. The Global Strategy Journal (GSJ) and Strategic Management Journal provided essential theoretical foundations. When I discovered GSJ special issues on global value chains and strategy amid deglobalization, I felt like I had found my intellectual home. The Paper Development Workshops were transformative. At the GSJ workshop on ‘Global Innovation in an Era of Disruptive Changes,’ I had the chance to discuss my ideas with guest editors who challenged and sharpened my thinking in ways I had not anticipated.
I have also been fortunate to learn from SMS members whose work shaped my own. Professor Ram Mudambi’s scholarship bridging economic geography and international business strategy gave me a language for thinking about location and firm boundaries. Professor Xavier Martin’s reading lists and our conversations helped me see where my work fits within broader strategic management debates. My engagement with them through the AIB-CIBER Doctoral Academy connected these international business insights to the SMS community. Looking back, this work is as much a product of this community as it is my own.
Who inspires you the most to do this work? (whether that is professionally or personally).
My primary supervisor, Professor Yundan Gong, has been the driving force behind this work. She first pointed me toward the relocation phenomenon as a research direction. Beyond setting the initial direction, she has been a true collaborator and unwavering in her support for my various research grant applications. Through this process, I developed a much deeper understanding of how to craft a compelling research proposal. My thinking was further expanded into the realm of institutions through conversations with my second supervisor, Professor Jan Knoerich, who has also played a crucial role. Ultimately, this work represents a convergence of my supervisors’ guidance and the rich intellectual resources of the AIB and SMS communities.