Professor Roh Tae-woo of the School of International Studies at Hanyang University has been selected for the 2025 Mid-Career Researcher Support Program funded by the National Research Foundation of Korea, the university announced on July 9.

Through this research project, Professor Roh aims to investigate how firms’ internationalization strategies and corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts—formulated in response to rising uncertainty in global trade policies—impact their sustainability and global competitiveness.

In particular, the study will provide both theoretical and empirical analysis of how Korean companies, which are heavily dependent on trade, respond to rapidly changing trade and environmental policies in major economic blocs such as the United States, China, and the European Union. The research is expected to generate significant academic and policy implications.

“In a time of rapidly shifting global dynamics, I sought to explore how firms can design coherent foreign direct investment and CSR strategies,” said Professor Roh. “I hope this study will offer practical guidelines for Korean companies exposed to trade policy risks.”

The research will span two years. In the first phase, the study will conduct panel data analysis of 500 publicly listed Korean firms. In the second phase, it will expand into an international comparative study that includes firms from major countries such as the United States and China. The project also features a unique research design, using political polarization and national election cycles as instrumental variables to control for the endogenous effects of policy uncertainty. In addition, joint research with leading scholars worldwide will deepen the theoretical framework and contribute to academic discourse in this field.

Professor Roh is a globally recognized expert in environmental management strategy. He was the first Korean scholar appointed to the editorial board of the SSCI journal Business Strategy and the Environment. He recently received the Editorial Contribution Award from Springer Nature for his role as review editor-in-chief of Asian Business & Management.

To date, Professor Roh has published more than 180 articles in leading SSCI and other accredited academic journals, including Technovation, International Business Review, Journal of International Management, Management International Review, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, and Journal of Cleaner Production. In 2024, he was also named among the world’s top 2% of researchers by Stanford University, further validating his outstanding contributions to the fields of international business and sustainable management.