Dr. Omar AL-Tabbaa
- Position: Associate Professor in International Business & Strategy /// Director of Research and Innovation
- Areas of expertise: Digitization; GVCs; Business Model Innovation; digital platform; SMEs Internationalization; Social alliance; University-Industry ties; Technology Transfer; strategic alliance, and emerging economies.
- Email: O.F.O.AlTabbaa@leeds.ac.uk
- Phone: +44(0)113 343 0127
- Website: Googlescholar | Researchgate | ORCID
Profile
Omar Al-Tabbaa is an Associate Professor of International Business (IB) and strategy, and Director of Research and Innovation at Leeds University Business School (LUBS). Prior to joining Leeds, he was a senior lecturer in strategic management and IB at Kent Business School, Huddersfield Business School, and the University of Roehampton London. Beyond academia, Dr. Al-Tabbaa founded and led the first technology business incubator in Gaza Strip Palestine (a project funded by the World Bank), and has also worked as a project manager in the construction industry for +7 years.
An awarding winning researcher in Strategy, IB, and Research Methods, Dr. Al-Tabbaa has written over 50 academic papers, chapters, invited case studies, and industrial reports on topics of digitization, strategic alliance, digital platform, GVC, business model innovation, SMEs, co-innovation, university-industry collaboration, Technology transfer, systematic literature review, and social partnership. His work has appeared in leading journals including Research Policy, British J. of Management, J. of International Management, International J. of Management Reviews, J. of Business Research, International Business Review, European Management Review, Technological Forecasting & Social Change, Multinational Business Review, and Industrial Marketing Management among others.
Dr. Al-Tabbaa is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Business Research (for the IB theme), and Article Editor for the Sage Open journal.
Reflecting his research's quality, impact, and innovation, Dr. Al-Tabbaa has an impressive record in citations and reads. By 2022, he has +1950 citations on Google Scholar and +75,000 reads on Reseachgate. In addition, his publications have received various accolades and awards, including three Wiley's top-cited papers by three different journals (2022 and 2021), three best paper awards from The British Academy of Management (BAM 2020 and BAM 2017), best thesis Award (University of Leeds), and the Emerald Awards for Research Excellence (Emerald Literati Award in 2015).
He has several achievements in securing external funds. To date, his research and enterprise activities have been supported by grants from both industries and research institutions (including Uni. of Leeds; Erasmus Plus; Uni. of Kent, European Subsea Cables Association, Project Management Institute, and World Bank-InfoDev program) totaling more than £1.0 million.
Responsibilities
- Director of Research
Research interests
Dr. Al-Tabbaa’s research activities address the area of strategy and international business. In specific, his current research explores three broad themes: 1) digitization for globalization; 2) the nature and process of inter-organizational relationships, and 3) the dynamic of business model innovation.
Under the first theme, he investigates the role of digital technologies in driving firms’ internationalization strategy and performance. Within the second theme, he studies the collaborative mechanisms between organizations in different settings including alliance management capabilities, co-internationalizing and co-innovation (with a focus on SMEs), technology transfer, and social alliance for public value creation. In the third theme, he examines how firms can develop their business models to create economic and social value in the developing economies domain. Part of his interest in this theme focuses on the SMEs digital platform ecosystem and dynamics.
Qualifications
- PhD Management and Economics - University of Leeds
- Master of Science (MSc) Management - University of Leeds
- Master of Science (MSc) Construction Management - IUG
- B.Sc. (Hons.) Engineering - University of Jordan
- The University of Leeds Teaching Award – (ULTA- 2)
Professional memberships
- Fellow of Higher Education Academy (HEA), UK