Prof. Dr. Erick Behar Villegas
Dean, Faculty of Business Administration
Head of Program, Master of Business Administration (MBA)
Erick Behar-Villegas was born in Bogotá in 1986, after which he was raised between the United States and Colombia. Erick studied Economics and Social Sciences at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany. He then did his master studies in Augsburg (M.Sc. in German French Management) and in Rennes, France (Master in International Management). He earned his Ph.D., Magna Cum Laude, at the Ludwig Maximilians Universität München in the area of applied cyber anthropology, studying applicant attraction and organizations from an interdisciplinary perspective. Erick has worked as a manager in the food industry and trade sector in Europe, with experience in SMEs and in conglomerates such as EDEKA Gruppe. Erick was appointed Dean of Economics and Business at the Central University of Colombia, after having served as Undersecretary of Economic Development and Competitiveness Director of Bogotá.
His teaching experience covers the areas of macroeconomics, public policy, entrepreneurship, and web metrics at institutions such as CESA Business School, Central, and Externado universities in Colombia and Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico. He is passionate about coffee and agriculture, having cofounded a startup in Colombia in the honey and fruit business, among other entrepreneurial projects in other sectors. Erick is a contributor to the renowned magazine Revista Dinero in Latin America, covering topics such as idiosyncrasy and policy issues. Apart from his academic work, Erick is a novelist. In 2021, he published Perdido en Legalandia (Lost in Legalandia), a novel about legalism in a world that parallels that of Latin America, whereby startup founders and innovators are crushed by a legal system of absurdities. Erick speaks and writes 8 languages. He is the author of several publications that deal with public policy, i.a.
Research areas
State efficiency, effects of legalism on economic actors, branding & storytelling, Latin America
Recent Publications
Academic
- Behar-Villegas, E. (2022). Absurda lex, sed lex? Public value and the decay of the Rule of Law: A conceptual perspective. Economics and Business Review EBR 22(3), 7-26 DOI: 10.18559/ebr.2022.3.2
- Behar-Villegas, E. & Koc, H (2022). Altering Credibility through short-term government branding: a digital framing experiment. Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik.
- Behar Villegas, E. (2021). Wasteful spending cultures: state inefficiency and policy narratives. Brazilian Journal of Public Administration, 55 (3), 662-678, http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/0034-761220200647
Novels
- La Matrona (forthcoming, end of 2022. Calixta Editores)
- Perdido en Legalandia (2021, Unión Editorial Colombia)
Email: behar@berlin-international.de
Twitter: @ProfErickB