EIBA 50th Anniversary Fellows’ plenary:

In 2024, the EIBA will celebrate its 50th anniversary! This event will be properly celebrated in
Helsinki during the annual conference. For this occasion, we are launching the
publication of the book on “EIBA history”. The “EIBA history” project started in 2015. The
initiative was envisaged as a joint endeavor mobilizing the whole EIBA community. This project
enjoyed the support and involvement of both the EIBA Board and EIBA Fellows. A Committee,
including John Cantwell (former Dean of the EIBA Fellows), Vítor Corado Simões (EIBA Fellow)
and Philippe Gugler (former EIBA Chair, and EIBA Fellow) was mandated by the EIBA Fellows
to lead this initiative. Joining us also Lucia Piscitello (current chair of EIBA) and Ana Tavares (in-coming Chair of EIBA). Tilo Halaszovich worked with us as communication officer, and designer
of the EIBA history website.

Alongside the editorial work of the EIBA History project, a research group allied to the
committee have been working on a study to analyse the topics of papers presented at EIBA
conferences from 1975 to 2020. The results of this study “the Evoluton of IB Research: A topic
model analysis of EIBA conference papers (1975-2020)1” are presented during a competitive
session this year in Lisbon. The paper highlights the important evolution of the scientific
thinking dedicated to IB. The subjects of study have diversified and deepened since 1975. This
analysis of the papers presented at the EIBA conferences shows that IB is a multidisciplinary
field covering topics ranging from the management of multinational companies to the political
impact of their activities.

We observe an important change in methodological approaches overtime, with a significant increase in the use of sound quantitative and qualitative methods, gradually displacing broad narratives based mainly on descriptive statistics.
One important issue to be debated is the character of the evolution of IB research issues
addressed in EIBA’s annual conferences so far, another is to then reflect together on where we
stand today, and how we might envisage the future development of IB research. This
discussion should be set in the light of how IB and our wider society in the real world has itself
evolved over time, and continues to change. This historical co-evolution between IB and IB
scholarship is how we also intend to proceed in the EIBA History book. Therefore, we propose
that the EIBA Fellows’ Plenary session in Helsinki should be devoted to EIBA’s History, focusing
primarily on the scientific achievements realized by our scholarly community to date, and to
debate possible visions for the path of research ahead. We further suggest that this plenary
panel could be chaired by John Cantwell, as a former Dean of the Fellows.