By: Alexis S. Anderson

Back in 1983, who would've guessed that Richard Deeg, a bright-eyed undergraduate at Minnesota's Macalester College, would go on to receive a Decade Award from the Academy of International Business? 

Certainly not Dr. Deeg himself, who up until recently had no idea the award even existed. He only became aware of it, and the fact that he'd received it, when the Academy invited him to its annual summer conference to take part in a special panel for the Decade Award.  "They must've put it out on their newsletter or email to all the members of the association," says Dr. Deeg, "because I then got emails from all these Fox faculty who were very excited over this."

The article, Comparing Capitalisms: Understanding Institutional Diversity and its Implications for International Business, stresses the importance of examining the political frameworks businesses operate within and how those frameworks differ by country. Dr. Deeg offered this as a complementary approach to the traditional international business strategy of focusing solely on aspects of a nation's economy to predict how a foreign firm will fare there.

"I've always taken a political economy approach to these questions because so much comes back to politics," explains Dr. Deeg. "Business regulation, trade policy, all that stuff often comes back to politics."

The dean's interest in political economy goes back to his days as a student. He double-majored in Political Science and Economics as an undergraduate; earned a Fulbright to study political economy at the University of Cologne in Germany; and his doctoral dissertation was titled Banks and the State in Germany: The Critical Role of Subnational Institutions in Economic Governance.

During his time as a professor in Temple's Political Science Department, Dr. Deeg taught undergraduate courses The Politics of Modern Capitalism and Democracy, Capitalism and Socialism, as well as graduate courses International Political Economy and Topics: Comparative Political Economy.

Dr. Deeg emphasizes that he's also long had an interest in international studies, which was reinforced during his time at the University of Cologne. The experience showed him that nuanced political differences exist between categorically similar nations. Thus, he encourages all students to spend time abroad, or at least study something outside their comfort zone.

For political science students in particular, the dean feels it's important to "really broaden your perspective when thinking about politics." As an example, he reviews how the anomaly of President Donald Trump is not so unique when compared to the rise of conservative populism being observed in a handful of other democratic nations.

"If you want to understand Trump, there are certainly things unique to American politics that explain his success. But, you also learn more if you think, 'Well, what are the underlying economic and social phenomenon going on that gave rise to him?' And that's where this comparative perspective becomes very valuable."

Even though Dr. Deeg goes out of his way to think globally, he has been teaching locally since joining Temple's Political Science Department as an Instructor in 1991. He became a full Professor in 2009, then served as Chair of the Department from 2010 to 2015 before becoming Dean of the College of Liberal Arts in fall 2016.

With Dr. Deeg coming up on two years as the Dean of Liberal Arts, he says he misses teaching and interacting with undergraduates on a regular basis. He hopes that in a couple years he might have time to juggle teaching a class and fulfilling his duties as dean.

Luckily, he'll have the chance to step back into the role of researcher at this summer's Academy of International Business conference in Minneapolis. At the Decade Award panel, Dr. Deeg and Dr. Jackson will discuss how the discipline of international business has changed in the decade since their paper was published.

While he's not sure what he'll say yet, Dr. Deeg does believe that the typologies of capitalism which seemed clear-cut 10 years ago have become harder to classify. "It's messier so to speak," he says.

The Decade Award is chosen annually from the five most-cited articles published in the Journal of International Business Studies 10 years prior. A Selection Committee then decides which of the five papers was most influential.

Deeg is proud of the impact his article has made.

"The fact that our article did get cited a lot would suggest that a lot of the people taking different approaches were taking it seriously and maybe began to look at their own research in a somewhat different way than what they were doing."