Alan M. Rugman (1945-2014) was a leading scholar in the field of international business.
In his last academic role, he served as Head of International Business and Strategy at Henley Business School, University of Reading in Reading, UK.
He later became a Canadian citizen and earned his Ph.D. in economics in 1974 from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
[2] He served as outside advisor to two Canadian prime ministers on issues of trade, FDI and international competitiveness, and in such capacity advised on the negotiation and adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
[2] While the conversation in academia and the public surrounding "globalization" grew in the late 1990s and early 2000s and works such as Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat gained notoriety, Rugman proposed that most of the world's largest firms are mainly regional [3] Rugman authored or coauthored more than 400 publications including books, book chapters and journal articles.