Prof. Dr. Lorenz Graf-Vlachy

Professor and Chairholder

Lange Gasse 20, 90403 Nürnberg

Raum 4.222

lorenz.graf-vlachy@fau.de

+49911530295314

Curriculum Vitae

Lorenz Graf-Vlachy is Chaired Professor of Strategic Management and Leadership at FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg, Affiliate Faculty and a Senior Research Fellow at ESCP Business School, as well as an International Research Fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation.

His work has been published in, for example, Organization Science, the Academy of Management Review, the Strategic Management Journal, the Journal of Management, the Journal of Management Studies, Academy of Management Discoveries, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, and the Journal of Product Innovation Management. He serves or has served on various editorial boards, including for the Academy of Management Review, Organization Science, and the Journal of Management. Going beyond the field of management, he has also published in information systems (e.g., ECIS, ICIS), software engineering (e.g., ICSE-NIER, TOSEM), and medical outlets (e.g., International Journal of Social Psychiatry). His work has been covered by various news media, including the Financial Times, Handelsblatt, Der Spiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Harvard Business Manager, Business Insider, Forbes, and Fortune.

Prior to his current appointment, he was Professor for Strategic Management and Leadership at TU Dortmund University and Professor and Chair of Strategy at ESCP Business School in Berlin. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Passau. He held visiting positions at other universities, for instance Harvard University, UC Berkeley, and Columbia Business School.

He received fellowships from the Schoeller Research Center for Business and Society, the Jackstädt Foundation, the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society as well as the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, and he gave invited talks at various institutions, including Tsinghua University, Imperial College London, Rotterdam School of Management, CEIBS, the US Army War College, ESADE, and the University of Oxford. He taught at HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Business, FU Berlin, and ESMT Berlin and performs executive education programs for leading international companies.

Before his academic career, he was a Project Leader at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in Munich. He was repeatedly invited to work with the BCG Henderson Institute in New York and was selected for a year-long secondment to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Geneva. Prior, he had started a small software company that he sold to a U.S. competitor.

He holds a master’s level degree in Information Systems and a doctoral degree from FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg as well as a habilitation from the University of Passau. He also studied at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business and at Tongji University in Shanghai. He is a graduate of the International Teachers Programme.

He is a member of various academic societies, including the Academy of Management, the Strategic Management Society, the IEEE (senior member), and the Association for Computing Machinery.

Teaching Activities & Publications

Teaching Activities

Selected Publications

  • “Understanding the Antecedents of CEO Regulatory Focus,” with F. Neville, C. Short, & F.X. Völkl, Journal of Management Studies, 2025, 62(7): 2859–2897. 
  • “Kindred Spirits: Cognitive Frame Similarity and Good Faith Provisions in Strategic Alliance Contracts,” with M. Hanisch, C. Haeussler, A. König, & T. Cho, Strategic Management Journal, 2025, 46(2): 436–469.
  • “Multi-CEOs: A Legitimacy Perspective on Executives Running Multiple Firms,” with S. Hensellek, & P. Haack, Academy of Management Discoveries, 2025, 11(4): 545–574.
  • “Narcissism at the CEO–TMT Interface: A New Narcissism Measure and a Test of the Consequences of Executive Narcissism for TMT Composition,” with S. Junge, M. Hagen, & F. Schlichte, Journal of Management,  2025, 51(5): 1765–1802.
  • “The Innovator’s Media Dilemma: How Journalists Cover Incumbents’ Adoption of Discontinuous Technologies,” with A. König, R. Banfield, M. Rauch, & A. Boutalikakis, Journal of Product Innovation Management, 2023, 40(1): 3–29. 
  • “Opportunity/Threat Perception and Inertia in Response to Discontinuous Change: Replicating and Extending Gilbert (2005),” with A. König, & M. Schöberl, Journal of Management, 2021, 47(3): 771–816.
  • “Effects of an Advancing Tenure on CEO Cognitive Complexity,” with J. Bundy, & D.C. Hambrick, Organization Science, 2020, 31(4): 936–959. 
  • “Media Coverage of Firms: Background, Integration, and Directions for Future Research,” with A.G. Oliver, R. Banfield, A. König, & J. Bundy, Journal of Management, 2020, 46(1): 36–69. 
  • “A Blessing and a Curse: How CEOs’ Trait Empathy Affects Their Management of Organizational Crises,” with A. König, J. Bundy, & L.M. Little, Academy of Management Review, 2020, 45(1): 130–153. 
  • “Institutional Challenges of Discontinuous Change: The Case of the Sharing Economy,” with F. Weber, J. Lehmann, & A. König, Journal of Product Innovation Management, 2019, 36(5): 632–660.
  • “Primary or complex? Towards a theory of metaphorical strategy communication in MNCs,” with A. König, A. Fehn, & J. Puck, Journal of World Business, 2017, 52(2): 270–285. 

You can find a complete list of all publications here.