Andreas König is Professor of Strategic Management, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship at the University of Passau, Germany.

Andreas König’s studies phenomena at the interface of three core fields of strategic management: (1) strategic leadership in the context of discontinuous technological change, particularly digital transformation; (2) the impact of top executives’ characteristics on organizational outcomes; and (3) strategic rhetoric and its influence on constituents’ social evaluations of organizations. His research has been published in leading scientific journals, such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Research Policy, Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of World Businessand MIT Sloan Management Review. He has received numerous international and national awards for his research, for instance, from the Academy of Management (e.g., Glueck Best Paper Award from the Strategic Management Division of the Academy of Management 2011 and 2013); the Strategic Management Society (e.g., Honorable Mention for the Best Conference Paper Prize 2018); the European Academy of Management (e.g., Runner-up for overall Best Paper Award 2017), the German Academic Association for Business Research (VHB Best Paper Award 2014), the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Outstanding-Habilitation-Prize in 2013), and the Dr. Theo and Friedl Schöller Research Center for Business and Society (Fellow Award in 2012). He is a member of the Editorial Review Boards of the Academy of Management Review and the Academy of Management Journal. In 2023 and 2024, he received the Outstanding Reviewer Award from the Academy of Management Review. In 2020-2021, he was Representative-at-Large of the Strategic Leadership and Governance Interest Group of the Strategic Management Society. König was also guest editor for a special issue on ‘Digital Transformation of Incumbent Firms’ of the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal. 

Since 2013, a significant part of Andreas König’s academic engagement at the University of Passau has been dedicated to the orchestration of third-party-funded interdisciplinary research projects. As designated spokespersons, he and his colleague Professor Jan Krämer led the application process for the University of Passau for a Cluster of Excellence within the framework of the Excellence Strategy of the German Federal and State Governments with the title “Cyber<>Spaces: Discourse, Co-Creation and Institutions in the Age of Digitalization” from 2015 to 2017. Although this project, which included all faculties of the university, was ultimately rejected with highly benevolent feedback, it provided comprehensive structural impulses for the research strategy of the University of Passau. Building on Cyber<>Spaces initiative, Jan Krämer and Andreas König initiated the DFG Research Training Group 2720 “Digital Platform Ecosystems (DPE)”, which was approved and inaugurated in 2022 and is funded with 5.7 million Euros. DPE is one of the world’s largest interdisciplinary graduate research and training groups specifically devoted to the study of digital platforms and ecosystems, one of the central phenomena of the digital economy. Since June 2021, Andreas König has also been working with Björn Schuller’s and Shahin Amiriparian’s team (Technical University Munich and Imperial College London) as part of an interdisciplinary DFG-funded project entitled “Multimodal Approach to Humor Recognition and an Analysis of the Influence of Leader Humor on Team Performance in Major European Soccer Leagues.” Andreas König collaborates particularly intensively in both research and teaching with his colleague Professor Carolin Häussler, Chair of Organization, Technology Management and Entrepreneurship. For example, they have recently published an award-winning study at the intersection of managerial cognition and strategic alliance research in the Strategic Management Journal. Outside the university, Andreas König’s most important long-standing cooperation partner and co-author is Professor Lorenz Graf-Vlachy from the Technical University of Dortmund. Andreas König co-authors also include numerous international cooperation partners https://www.wiwi.uni-passau.de/en/strategy-innovation/research/partners . 

Andreas König is or was a member of the visiting faculties at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Vienna University of Economics and Business, HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management, ESMT Berlin, and IMD Lausanne. As a scientist, keynote speaker, and executive facilitator, he has been working with executives of German and multinational companies such as Allianz, BASF, Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Telekom, Douglas Holding, Dr. Oetker, ERGO Direkt, McKinsey & Company, ICUnet, Jenoptik, Phoenix Contact, Nestlé, OMAX, Porsche Consulting, RWE, SAP, SCHOTT, Stern Stewart, Stora Enso, Sumida, Siemens, Telefónica, ThyssenKrupp, TÜV Nord, and Volkswagen.He also cooperates closely with start-ups and non-profit organizations. 

Both his scholarly and his educational work are significantly influenced by his uniquely diverse experiences, particularly as a professional musician, which he made prior to entering the field of business studies. After studying classical trumpet at the Rotterdam Conservatoire (today Codarts University for the Arts), Andreas König completed a degree as Master of Music at the Royal Academy of Music and King’s College, London.  As a musician, he was especially influenced by his professors Edward Carroll, John Wallace, Howard Snell, and Ray Allen as well as, during his youth, the saxophonist and musical educator Elmar Frey, who made it possible that adolescent musicians had the opportunity to work with Jazz legends such as Peter Herbolzheimer, Bob Brookmeyer, Bob Mintzer, Bobby Shew, the van Rooyen brothers, and Ed Partyka. König played solo recitals in venues such as St Paul’s Cathedral, London, the Cathedral of Palma de Mallorca, and St Nicolas’ Church in Leipzig. He recorded CDs (for a link, klick, here or here) and performed under the batons of conductors such as Sir Colin Davies, Lord Yehudi Menuhin, and Sir Charles Mackerras. Andreas König holds an MBA from HHL Leipzig. To complement his studies, Andreas König visited lectures in protestant theology, classical philosophy and philology at the Universities of Bonn, Madrid, and Leiden.