Position at IIB, other positions and academic career

Dr. Jelena Cerar is a tenure-track Assistant Professor at the Institute for International Business (IIB) at WU Vienna. She has held visiting postdoctoral positions at Copenhagen Business School, the University of Southern California (USC Marshall School of Business), and the Institute for Artificial Intelligence Research and Development of Serbia. She earned her doctorate with honors from WU Vienna, focusing on headquarters resource allocation within multinational corporations (MNCs). Her dissertation received the Stephan Koren Best Dissertation Award 2021, recognizing the best dissertations at WU Vienna, and was a finalist for the 2021 Peter J. Buckley and Mark Casson AIB Dissertation Award, which honors the best dissertation in International Business worldwide. During her doctoral studies, she also completed the Regional Academy of the United Nations, earning both the Best Student of the Year Award and the Ban Ki-moon Global Citizen Award. Dr. Cerar holds a master’s degree from the Erasmus Mundus EGEI program in Economics, having studied in China, Belgium, and Italy as a European Commission scholarship recipient. She completed her undergraduate studies in Economics and International Relations in Belgrade, Serbia, where she is originally from.

Before transitioning to academia, Dr. Cerar gained extensive industry experience as a business development manager and strategy consultant in international firms headquartered in Germany, Austria, and the USA. She also co-founded and served as CEO of Teach for Serbia, part of the global Teach for All network. At WU Vienna, prior to her faculty role at IIB, she worked as Program Manager for CEE and Emerging Markets and lectured in the CEMS Master’s program. She has gained international experience by living, working, and studying in 10 countries, which shapes her global perspective in research and teaching.

Dr. Cerar has taught at the bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. levels at universities across Austria (WU Vienna, JKU Linz), Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, and the UK. Additionally, she has contributed to several research methods webinars organized by the Academy of International Business (AIB). Her teaching excellence has been recognized with multiple awards and nominations, including the WU Innovative Teaching Award and as a finalist for the Academy of International Business Teaching Innovation Award.

Research interest

Dr. Cerar’s research focuses on decision-making and behavioral strategy in multinational corporations (MNCs), with an emphasis on AI, digitalization, and cognition in strategic decision-making. She also explores headquarters-subsidiary relations and international business (IB) research methods, particularly laboratory and field experiments. Her work has been published in leading international journals, including the Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Management Studies, and Journal of International Management. Her research has been recognized with multiple awards and nominations from the Academy of International Business (AIB) and the Academy of Management.

Her ongoing research includes the following projects:

• Reliance on AI in Augmented Strategic Decision-making: Navigating Cultural and National Dynamics

• Cognitive Exhaustion and Reliance on AI Advice in Multi-Decision Settings

• Strategic Decision-preparation Capabilities in Hierarchical Problem-solving: Causes, Effects, and the Role of Generative AI

• Problems of Hypothesis Testing in International Business research

• Experimental Design in International Business Research: Challenges, Opportunities, and Pathways for Advancement