William Wales

Faculty Expertise and Achievement

Dr. Bill Wales is an internationally recognized expert on the topic of entrepreneurial orientation (EO), an organizational strategic orientation towards entrepreneurial activity, growth, and renewal. Dr. Wales has authored more than 100 scholarly works on managerial topics such as entrepreneurship, business strategy, new value creation, firm performance, and organizational scaling across scholarly outlets spanning journal articles, encyclopedia entries, edited volumes, book chapters, special issues, and conference presentations.

He currently serves as an editor of the Financial Times Top 50 (FT 50) journal, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice (ETP), which was recently ranked the 15th most impactful journal in Business for 2022 (JCR IF 10.5). An editorial that he co-authored for ETP in 2019 on “Crafting High-Impact Entrepreneurial Orientation Research: Some Suggested Guidelines” was the most downloaded article from the journal that year and most cited article published in ETP over a proceeding three-year period. His work has also been published within the Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of Management Studies, and the Journal of Product Innovation Management among other prestigious outlets. In addition to his editorial role at ETP, Dr. Wales serves on the editorial boards of two other leading entrepreneurship journals, the Journal of Business Venturing and Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, where he received an Outstanding Service Award in 2017.

He is an active member of the Academy of Management, and frequent contributor to the United States Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship’s annual conference where he is a two-time recipient of their Best Empirical Paper Award. Additionally, he serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the University of Bayreuth’s Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. His future research directions include understanding how EO is expressed within managerial communications and developing a richer conceptualization of EO as a theory of new value creation.

Research Interests

Entrepreneurial Orientation; Corporate Entrepreneurship and Renewal; Strategic Behavior and Strategy Formulation; CEO Attributes and Strategy-making

Research Websites

• Google Scholar Profile
• Research on Entrepreneurial Orientation

Teaching Interests and Areas

• BMGT 698 – New Venture Development Research
• BMGT 675 – Creativity and Entrepreneurship
• BMGT 460 – Social Entrepreneurship
• BMGT 400 – Introduction to Entrepreneurship

Professional Service

• Editor, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice
• Editorial Board, Journal of Business Venturing
• Editorial Board, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal
• Editorial Board, Journal of Management Studies

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