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Mini Track Chair:
Defense has become one of the fastest-moving arenas for business innovation, and the gap between Eastern and Western Europe is nowhere more visible than in defense capability, industrial capacity, and access to technology. Geopolitical conflicts and the rearmament of Europe have turned defense from a closed, state-driven sector into a dynamic ecosystem of established primes, start-ups, dual-use technologies, venture capital and academic research. Business schools and economists can no longer treat it as peripheral: procurement reform, supply-chain resilience, the economics of deterrence and the commercialisation of dual-use technologies are now central questions of management, strategy, industrial policy and public economics.
Like every other sector, the defense industry is being transformed by digitalisation, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and new energy solutions, while operating under constraints few other industries face: export controls, long procurement cycles, sovereign ownership and security requirements. Economic security and connectivity have become inseparable from defense: the Middle Corridor linking Central Asia to Europe through the Caucasus and the Black Sea, energy supply routes and critical infrastructure are now strategic assets whose resilience depends on both public policy and business decisions. Understanding how business models and public policies adapt to these conditions, how knowledge flows between universities, industry and governments, and how Eastern European economies can move from consumers to producers of defense capability is essential for closing the gap between East and West.
This mini track invites conceptual, empirical and case-based contributions from management, economics, international business, public policy and security studies. We particularly welcome interdisciplinary work and research on Central and Eastern Europe, the Black Sea region and NATO’s Eastern Flank.
The main topics covered by the hereby call for papers are related to:
Alexandra Bran
is an Associate Lecturer at the Faculty of Business Administration in Foreign Languages (FABIZ), Bucharest University of Economic Studies (ASE), where she also coordinates the Master’s programme Digital Business and Innovation. In 2026, she received a PhD in Economics and International Business from ASE, with a doctoral dissertation on economic policies in the European defence industry, based on a comparative analysis of European countries. She previously served as Advisor to the Romanian Minister of National Defence and as State Secretary Office Advisor within the Department for Defence Policy, Planning and International Relations and the Department for Armaments of the Ministry of National Defence, contributing to defence policy and strategic initiatives. She is also a graduate of the National Security Introduction Course at the National Defence College in Bucharest. Her research interests include defence economics, national resilience, civil-military cooperation, economic security, and the role of higher education in supporting security and resilience.
