International Business Pioneer Receives Britain’s Highest Honour

Peter Buckley, Professor of International Business at the University of Leeds in the U.K. and a good friend of the Sprott School of Business, has been appointed OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) “for his service in higher education, international business and research”.  He was honoured at a Buckingham Palace ceremony on May 4.

“Peter’s accomplishment is quite amazing and we extend to him our warmest congratulations,” says Nicolas Papadopoulos, Chancellor’s Professor of Marketing and International Business in the Sprott School of Business. “His award also says a lot about international business as a discipline. Just twenty or thirty years ago, those of us working in this area had to fight tooth and nail to get it recognized as a field of study – and now, one of its pioneers has been awarded Britain’s highest honour for his work in it. As Peter put it in a recent email to me, ‘IB seems to have arrived.’ It’s been quite a ride, and it’s good to be part of a school that is as internationalized as Sprott.”

Dr. Buckley’s relationship with the Sprott School goes back to the early 1980s through acquaintances with faculty members in international business including Dr. Papadopoulos and Dr. David Cray. He first visited Carleton in 1989 as an invited speaker of the International Business Study Group. That visit led to the school’s first international exchange partnership with the University of Bradford where Dr. Buckley was at the time. He visited again in 2007 as a keynote speaker for the Fourth Annual Sprott Doctoral Symposium.

Dr.  Buckley is recognized as a world authority on international business. He is the author of 22 books and 175 refereed articles. In addition, he has served as President of the Academy of International Business. Among many other distinctions, in 2010 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Uppsala in Sweden and the prestigious Cheung Kong Scholar Chair Professorship at the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE) in China.

For more on this story, visit the Leeds University Business School website.