Biographical note

Alan Benson was formerly a Senior Lecturer in Management at the University of Exeter Business School, where he held module leader responsibilities for Master's-level modules, such as 'Managing in a Multinational Context' and 'Strategy', as well as 'Business Projects' on the undergraduate degree programmes. He has worked in UK academia for more than 25 years, taught MBA-level modules in Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Accounting in the UK, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong and Indonesia, and supervised numerous Master's-level dissertations and student internship project reports. Before becoming a full-time academic, Dr Benson worked as a senior management consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers and gained senior management experience in several industrial sectors, including a number of blue-chip engineering and manufacturing companies. Richard L. Daft is the Brownlee O. Currey, Jr. Professor of Management and Principal Senior Lecturer in the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University. Professor Daft specializes in the study of organization theory and leadership and is a fellow of the Academy of Management. He has served on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly and Journal of Management Education. He was the associate editor-in-chief of Organization Science and served for three years as associate editor of Administrative Science Quarterly. Professor Daft has authored or co-authored 14 books and written dozens of scholarly articles, papers and chapters in other books.