Dr Karl Warner is a Senior Lecturer in Strategy at the Adam Smith Business School.

Karl’s research and teaching lies at the intersection of strategy, entrepreneurship and international business.

Karl is currently investigating how private and public sector organisations are pursuing large-scale digital transformations in response to economic, social and technological change. Using qualitative methods, he is interested in studying how senior leadership teams go about building innovation capabilities and networks for collaborating and competing in fast-changing environments.

Karl’s published research has investigated how multinational corporations go about building innovation capabilities for large-scale, corporate-wide digital transformations. He holds a CMCE Research Award for Technology and Consulting and the 2019 Urwick Cup for this published research from London’s Worshipful Company of Management Consultants (WCoMC) in partnership with the British Academy of Management.

In September 2023, Karl became the Principal Investigator for an InterAct funded Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Made Smarter Innovation research project that seeks to develop a strategy that can attract the next generation of young talent into digital manufacturing careers by 2040. By working with policy makers, business leaders, educators and young people, this project is co-creating the most plausible future scenarios for attracting young people into UK digital manufacturing careers by 2040.

Karl is the co-author of the university textbook “Strategic Management: 10th edition” published by SAGE and has taught strategic management at all higher-education levels and on senior executive education programmes. 

He is currently the Programme Director for the ESRC accredited MRes in Management programe, supervises a team of doctoral researchers on topics relating to large-scale digital transformations and is the course coordinator for the MBA Strategic Management.

Karl is a proud three-time graduate from the University of Glasgow earning a MA (Hons of the First Class), MSc (Distinction) and PhD in Management and has held posts at the University of Queensland, University of Strathclyde and Edinburgh Napier University prior to returning to the University of Glasgow in 2019.

Research cluster: Strategy and Technology Management

Areas of expertise:

• Digital transformation
• Corporate strategy
• Business growth
• Strategic renewal
• Foreign market entry and expansion strategies
• Case study research and teaching

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£111,630 ESRC Made Smarter Network+ ("InterAct") Commissioned Research Programme (Principal Investigator) - awarded 2023.

£6995 Edinburgh Napier Business School Research Funding Competition (co-investigator) – awarded 2017.

£8000 Edinburgh Napier University Early Career Researcher Grant (principal investigator) – awarded 2016.

£1000 Academy of International Business (AIB-UKI) Doctoral Researcher Grant – awarded 2009.

Karl will consider full-time, funded PhD applications in strategic management, technology entrepreneurship and international business. He welcomes doctoral research applications in corporate strategy areas relating to the digital transformation of incumbent firms, digital innovation and entrepreneurship, and the internationalisation of technology-based new ventures.

• Lee, Benjamin
  Using a Dynamic Capabilities perspective to explore the adoption of AI and Machine Learning for Data Analytics (AIMLDA) in Accounting firms

Karl has been awarded a Senior Fellowship from the UK Higher Education Academy (SFHEA) for using the case method as a teaching strategy. He has incorporated this approach into the following courses:

• Business competition
• Strategic management
• MBA strategic management

Membership

Karl is a member of:

• British Academy of Management (BAM)
• Academy of Management (AOM)
• Strategic Management Society (SMS)
• Academy of International Business (AIB)

Reviewer

He has reviewed for leading management journals including:

• Long Range Planning
• Journal of World Business
• Industrial Marketing Management
• British Journal of Management
• Strategic Management Journal
• Journal of International Business Studies