Michael Hitt

Michael A. Hitt is an American business management scholar, consultant, academic and author. He is a University Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Texas A&M University and a Distinguished Visiting Research Scholar at Texas Tech University.

Hitt is most known for his work on strategic entrepreneurship, strategic planning, and resource management. His publications comprise research articles and books including Strategic Management: Competitiveness and Globalization, Strategic Management: State of the Field and Its Future and Organizational Behavior. He was listed among the top scholars in economics, finance, and management by Times Higher Education, as a Highly Cited Researcher in the Web of Science, and has been ranked third globally by Research.com. Additionally, he is the recipient of several best article awards from journals, along with the 2001 Irwin Outstanding Educator Award from the Academy of Management, the 2021 Ambassador Award from the Journal of Operations Management, and the Lifetime Influence and Impact Award from the Family Enterprise Research Conference in 2023.

Hitt is a Fellow of the Academy of Management, the Strategic Management Society, and the Academy of International Business. He held various editorial roles such as the Editor of the Academy of Management Journal, Co-editor of the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, the Editor-in-Chief of Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Business and Management and Oxford Handbooks Online: Business and Management.

Education and early career Hitt earned a Bachelor of Business Administration in 1968 and an MBA in 1969 from Texas Tech University. From 1970 to 1971, he served as a Consultant at Samsonite Corporation and received a PhD in Organization Theory from the University of Colorado Boulder in 1974. He was also a lead author on a paper published in Academy of Management Perspectives in 2011 which detailed their more developed thinking on strategic entrepreneurship.

Mergers and acquisitions Hitt's work on mergers and acquisitions focused on the effects on innovation and characteristics. He started working on this subject in the late 1980s, with his first article published in 1991, where he examined the impact of acquisitive growth on managerial commitment to innovation, suggesting that factors like the acquisition process and post-acquisition conditions influence managers' dedication to innovation, shaping strategic decision-making. In a study funded by the NSF, he discovered why M&As often have longer term negative effects on firm innovation, including the concept of suspended animation of R&D projects in target firms during the time of negotiations. Later, his research further expanded to identifying the characteristics of high performing and low performing M&As. He co-wrote a book, Mergers and Acquisitions: A Guide to Creating Value for Stakeholders, alongside Jeffrey Harrison and Ireland, which utilized a resource orchestration framework to examine which combinations of acquiring and target firms' capabilities are likely to create the most value for stakeholders. Ithai Stern stated that the work is "a travel guide holding everything you need to know for a perfect journey through the world of mergers and acquisitions."

International strategy and institutions Hitt explored the effects of institutions on international strategies, with his early research focusing on how international diversification impacts firm performance, noting initial benefits, diminishing returns, and implications for competitive advantage in product-diversified firms. He looked into country institutions which then extended to regional institutions because firms often focus their international market entries in regions and countries therein. This research has extended to the focus on the effects of polycentric institutions on entrepreneurial strategies and entrepreneurs' social networks across countries as well as how firm resources affect their international strategies. Most recently, he investigated how major environmental disruptions, like pandemics, have affected country institutions that in turn have affected firms' international strategies such as the global or regional supply chains.

Resource orchestration Hitt studied the corporate strategies of resource orchestration for improved management as well. He conducted research on firm competencies, corporate strategies, and the resource-based view, noting early criticisms of its static nature. Alongside David Sirmon and Ireland, he developed a dynamic model for resource management to create customer value and competitive advantage. Thereafter, he collaborated and published several empirical studies testing parts of the model proposed in the former article. Additionally, in 2011, he extended the original model, referring to it as resource orchestration, contrasting it with Adner and Helfat's concept of asset orchestration.

Recognition 1992 – Fellow, Academy of Management 2021 – Ambassador Award, Journal of Operations Management 2023 – Lifetime Influence and Impact Award, Family Enterprise Research Conference