Publications
Publications
- 2021
- The Multiple Dimensions of Institutional Complexity in International Business Research
Renewing the Relevance of IB: Can Some History Help?
By: Geoffrey Jones
Abstract
International business (IB) as a discipline has given limited attention to contemporary grand challenges of inequality, global warming, aging populations, endemic health crises, and de-globalization, in all of which multinationals are either central to the problem or may offer some solutions. A historical perspective makes clear the reason for this neglect. IB theory and implicit assumptions were shaped during the discipline’s formative period during the 1960s and the 1970s. This has left it excessively focused on the growth of manufacturing multinationals, and with naïve assumptions about the linear and benevolent progress of globalization. This mental toolkit is ill-equipped to understand the present. Engaging deeply with history can also enhance the contextual intelligence of IB. IB’s founders barely questioned the positive impact of multinationals, yet historical evidence points to many negative outcomes, and to globalization driving inequality. Understanding how implicit assumptions and biases arose is the first step to re-set IB with research questions and methodologies relevant to a turbulent and de-globalized age.
Keywords
Citation
Jones, Geoffrey. "Renewing the Relevance of IB: Can Some History Help?" Chap. 6 in The Multiple Dimensions of Institutional Complexity in International Business Research. Vol. 15, edited by Alain Verbeke, Rob van Tulder, Elizabeth L. Rose, and Yingqi Wei, 77–92. Progress in International Business Research. Bingley, United Kingdom: Emerald Publishing Limited, 2021.
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