About Mary Yoko Brannen

Mary Yoko Brannen is Professor Emerita at San José State University and Honorary Professor of International Business at the Copenhagen Business School. Professor Brannen pioneered the use of  ethnographic methods in IB to understand and theorize from complex cultural phenomena. Her early in-depth studies of the internationalization of large multinational firms such as Disney and NSK Ball Bearings are noted for contributing the constructs of negotiated culture, recontextualization, and biculturals as natural boundary-spanners to the field.  

 She was appointed Fellow of the Academy of International Business in 2016 having served as Deputy Editor of the Journal of International Business Studies for two consecutive elected terms (2011-2016).  At a time when large-scale, cross-sectional, quantitative studies were the norm in the field’s leading journal, Professor Brannen is credited with broadening the range of research methods recognized by IB scholars to include qualitative mixed methods studies, ethnography, semiotics, and linguistical analysis.  

 Professor Brannen previously held the Jarislowsky East Asia (Japan) Chair of Cross-Cultural Management at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada and has served as a Visiting Professor at INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France, Stanford University, California, U.S.A, and Keio University, Tokyo, Japan.  She was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Department of International Economics, Government and Management at CBS in 2016. She currently sits on the Advisory Boards of the Master of International Business at the Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden, the Groupe d’Études Management & Langage (GEM&L) in France, and the Center for Japanese Studies at Portland State University in the U.S.