Wolfgang Messner
International Business, Marketing, and Management
Clinical Professor
Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina, USA
Ph.D. - University of Kassel, Germany
M.B.A. - University of Wales, UK
B.Sc. & M.Sc. - Technical University Munich, Germany
Wolfgang Messner is Clinical Professor at the Darla Moore School of Business, Sonoco International Business Department, University of South Carolina (US). He teaches Global Competitive Analysis, The Business Case of Services Offshoring, Doing Business in India, and Managing Cross-Border Teams in the #1 ranked (as per U.S. News and World Report) undergraduate and postgraduate international business program.
He holds a Doctorate in Marketing from the University of Kassel (Germany), an MBA from the University of Wales (UK), and a combined Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Business Informatics after studies at the Technical University Munich (Germany), University of Newcastle upon Tyne (UK), and Università per Stranieri di Perugia (Italy).
Prior to joining the University of South Carolina, Wolfgang Messner was Professor of International Management at the MYRA School of Business in Mysore (India), and has taught as Adjunct Faculty at the Indian Institutes of Management Bangalore, Indore and Kozhikode (India), Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg (Germany), Royal Docks Business School (University of East London, UK), and WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management (Germany). He co-founded GloBus Research in India, a niche consulting company, to help resolve international business and leadership challenges. He has further worked for 18 years as a business analyst, project manager, and management consultant with the BMW Group, Capgemini, Deutsche Bank, and The Information Management Group IMG in Europe and India. He has consulted, led programs, and provided executive leadership trainings in big multinationals like BMW, Capgemini, Commerzbank, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Ericsson, Hitachi, Infosys, McKinsey, Microsoft, Siemens, Thomas Cook, and many highly successful mid-caps across industry verticals.
Professor Messner has written eight books, including The Palgrave Handbook of Managing Continuous Business Transformation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017; co-editor), Globalization of Professional Services (Springer, 2012; co-editor), and Working with India (Springer, 2009). His research has been published in the IIMB Management Review, International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Journal of Air Transport Management, Journal of Customer Behaviour, Journal of Global Marketing, Journal of Indian Business Research, South Asian Journal of Global Business Research, and The Marketing Review. He specializes in international business, particularly on issues of marketing to consumers in India. He works with a large data set of airline reviews to unearth and expound cultural differences. His second stream of research activities are focused on intercultural team management, where he examines culturally driven aspects of employee commitment and effectiveness. He also looks at the practicalities of measuring, confining, and distinguishing cultures. In his earlier work, he researched organizational and people issues in the context of services offshoring, and strategies for customer service excellence.