EIBA 50th Anniversary Fellows’ panel

Gabriel R.G. Benito, BI Norwegian Business School
Jonathan Doh, Villanova University, USA
Gary Gereffi, Honorary EIBA Fellow
Valentina De Marchi, ESADE Business School, Spain
Niina Nummela, University of Turku, Finland (Chair)

Corporate Representative: Sari Baldauf, Chair of the Board of Directors, Nokia

International Business (IB) research is – as any discipline – under continuous development towards the better. Twenty years ago IB scholars were wondering if the IB research agenda was running out of steam (Buckley 2002) and searching for new, relevant research questions (Peng 2004). Over the years, critical voices within the field have been increasing and arguing that IB research is no longer inspiring, engaging or interesting (Delios 2017). The past decade has increasingly stressed the need for rigorous but also relevant and impactful IB research on issues that matter – not only for scholars but for everyone (Fernhaber & Zou 2022, Buckley, Doh & Benischke 2017).

However, the question about how to achieve this ambitious goal remains open. This panel presents different views on pathways towards impactful future IB research. The panelists bring forward internal factors, such as our own choices as well as external pressures, including various policies and frameworks, both affecting our path towards the desirable outcome. Besides addressing the gap between IB theory and practice the panel aims to boost a debate on the topic as well as propose new interesting questions for future research.
Abstracts of the presentations

The choices we make to do impactful IB research (Gabriel R.G. Benito)
Doing impactful research in IB requires some thoughtful choices regarding which topics to examine as well as how to conduct the research. It also entails a serious commitment to involve external perspectives in research, i.e. to bring in the views and voices of those concerned and to forcefully engage in communication and dialogue with the stakeholders of research, with an aim to usefully contribute to change. What are pertinent topics has been raised by several recent articles; see, inter alia, Buckley et al.’s (2017) article in JIBS on big questions in IB, Benito et al.’s (2022) essay in GSJ on the future of global strategy, or Tung’s (2023) editorial in JIBS about IB studies that include and that matter. How impactful research comes about has been less discussed, although many have
pointed to a potential trade-off between relevance and rigor. I argue that is an erroneous assertion. Research without rigor does not provide useful impact and can potentially even be dangerous.

Generating IB research with societal impact (Jonathan Doh)
Over the past decade, there have been increasing calls from scholarly professional associations such as the AACSB, AOM and the REF Framework urging business schools and their faculty to direct attention toward the societal impact of their teaching/learning, service and research activities. Drawing on recent publications in JIBS and elsewhere, in this presentation, I will outline some of the critiques, limitations, and shortcomings of extent IB research as it relates to societal impact. I will then offer strategies for conducting IB research that has potential for societal impact, focusing especially on opportunities for relaxing established assumptions, approaches, and methods so as to leverage a broader, richer, and more inclusive agenda for IB scholarship.

Industrial policy and global value chains: Where are we headed? (Gary Gereffi)
The societal relevance and impact of international business (IB) research to bridge the gap between theory and practice and to contribute to the betterment of the world are increasingly emphasized within the IB discipline and its flagship journals (Tung, 2023; Lundan, 2018; Van Assche, 2018). The global value chain (GVC) approach is uniquely positioned to pursue and deliver this impact because it links the macro- (global), meso- (industry and country), and micro- (firm and community) levels of analysis and it highlights the role of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in global industries and their impact on the development prospects of advanced, emerging and less-developed nations in the global economy (Gereffi, 2018; 2019). What is new in the current era, defined by multiple disruptions and economic slowdowns caused by the COVID-19 global pandemic, the rising wave of economic nationalism, and multiple geopolitical conflicts and shifts, is the expanding role of industrial policy as both advanced and emerging governments are using industrial policies to strengthen strategic global supply chains of their respective nations (Gereffi, 2023). This raises many new questions and challenges for the IB research community.

Streamlining impact in IB research (Valentina De Marchi)
The past few years witnesses economic, political, societal, technological, environmental transformations of unprecedent depth and speed, which is challenging international businesses from an ontological and axiological perspective. The progressive overshooting of planetary boundaries, the raising inequalities and the spreading evidence of infringements of human rights are some of the key social concerns that IBs are required to address, implying heavy transformations on the ‘why’ and ‘how’ toward which they often prove unprepared. While such topics are increasingly central to IB (and non-IB) scholarly research and important contributions have been provided in those fields, there is the perception of an increased disconnection between academia and business practice, blamed to the difficulties of academia to exit the ‘ivory tower’ and find effective ways to interact with and influence the activities of policy makers and firms, raising new questions and new opportunities for IB researchers. The panel contribution aim at sparkle discussions on the challenges but also on the many exciting avenues to boost IB scholarly impact.