40th Annual Conference
Conference website: www.eiba2014.org
Uppsala University, Sweden
December 11-13, 2014
The Future of Global Organizing
Call for Papers
Introduction & Background
Over the past four decades, since the establishment of the European International Business Academy (EIBA), we have seen large changes with regard to the organization and structure of international firms. Partly as a consequence of the on-going globalization process, we see today a great variety of organizational and geographic structures in multinational corporations (MNCs). These structures, in turn, reflect the tensions between different organizational principles, such as, the MNC as a hierarchy or a network, internalizing or externalizing core business activities, and the relative importance of headquarters and subsidiaries in the value creation processes. Such tensions are crucial issues for further research on the future of global organizing – the underlying theme of this year’s EIBA Annual Conference.
We have also seen an increased interest in the interplay between the environment and the MNC. While earlier studies tended to concentrate on the impact of national and cross-national institutions on the organization of business, recent studies have also focused on the political role of MNCs and their possibility to shape the rules and regulations in different countries. The interplay between the institutional environment and the MNC leads to new challenges as well as a variety of opportunities for multinational corporations to ultimately affect the way in which business across national borders is organized. Taking a more critical stance towards MNCs has raised questions of organizational politics and power, not only reacting to unethical behaviours and financial crises, but more fundamentally challenging our overall understanding of the MNC; post-colonial organizational and intersectionality theories have also provided new understandings.
When we observe contemporary phenomena around us we find a number of interesting organizational forms, which potentially may characterize global organizing in the future. One example is cross-sector partnerships where firms join together with non-profit organizations, governmental agencies, and local communities to pursue unattainable goals and resources. Further, individuals outside the MNC are increasingly involved in the firm in novel ways such as in the use of ‘open innovation’, or ‘equity crowd funding’. We can raise questions as to whether these large groups of investors in the future may be interested in more than profit in return for their investments, and if so, what does that imply for firm management and organization? We have also seen how small local players who organize themselves into networks have become competitors seriously challenging large global firms, as for example, when small energy producers in Germany challenged large multinationals on the market. Will such independent local network organizations spread across the world and become a new form of global organizing in the future?
The above raises questions like:
- What new forms of global organizing can we expect in the future, and will the MNC as we know it become extinct?
- How can we understand the value creation processes in the MNC and the contributions of different units in these processes?
- How is the tension between corporate and local rationality handled in the contemporary MNC?
- Are market power and political power of the contemporary MNCs relevant issues for research among IB scholars?
- How can MNCs meet the often conflicting demands of corporate social responsibility, sustainable operations, and responsible (ethical) leadership, and remain viable in the long run?
- What do contemporary digital and technological developments, e.g., social media, virtual worlds, and cloud services, imply for the international organization of work, communication, and management practices?
- How can MNCs’ human resource management practices become inclusive yet motivating, flexible yet representative, and how do they link to employer branding efforts on a global scale?
- How do linguistic and cultural diversity enrich global organizations and their activities?
We encourage and would welcome the IB community at large to submit their thought-provoking and adventurous papers on these and related questions to the EIBA 2014 theme track on the future of global organizing.
Conference Tracks
We invite competitive papers and working papers on any of the following EIBA 2014 conference tracks.
For more information and key words for each track, please visit the conference website:http://www.eiba2014.org/.
Competitive papers, presented in competitive sessions, should be close to a publishable state, whilst working papers, presented in interactive sessions, may be in an earlier stage of development.
Proposals for panel sessions can also be submitted to the most appropriate track.
1. Theme track: The Future of Global Organizing
Track chair: Ivo Zander, Uppsala University
2. Developments In IB Theory and Methods, Trends and Critical Approaches
Track chair: Ana Teresa Tavares-Lehmann, University of Porto
3. Internationalisation Process, SMEs and Entrepreneurship
Track chair: Olli Kuivalainen, Lappeenranta University of Technology
4. Corporate Governance, Finance, and Accounting
Track chair: Niels Hermes, Groningen University
5. International HRM, Global Leadership, Language and Cross-Cultural Management
Track chair: Dana Minbaeva, Copenhagen Business School
6. MNC Strategy and Organisation
Track chair: Tina Ambos, University of Sussex
7. International Marketing and Value Chain Management
Track chairs: Tomas Hult, Michigan State University, and Vicky Bamiatzi, University of Leeds
8. Knowledge Management and Innovation
Track chair: Kristiina Mäkelä, Aalto University
9. MNCs, Governments and Sustainable Development
Track chair: Mo Yamin, Manchester Business School
10. Teaching International Business
Track chair: Elizabeth Rose, University of Otago
Submission of Papers
All papers will be double-blind refereed. Copies of all the accepted papers for competitive and interactive sessions will be published in the EIBA 2014 Conference Proceedings. Detailed guidelines for the submission of conference papers will be available on the conference website: http://www.eiba2014.org/.
The submission deadline for all competitive and working papers, as well as for panel proposals, is Tuesday, July 15, 2014.
All papers should be submitted via the conference website to the Chair of one (and only one) of the conference tracks. The submission system will be live from May 15, 2014.
Pre-Conference Activities
Doctoral Tutorial & Doctoral Symposium
The 2014 EIBA Annual Conference is proud to host the 28th John H. Dunning Doctoral Tutorial in International Business. This one-day event gives selected doctoral students the opportunity to discuss their research with distinguished international faculty, and enables the students to become better acquainted with an international network of researchers in international business.
EIBA 2014 is also pleased to host the 3rd EIBA Doctoral Symposium, recently initiated to increase the number of student participants to EIBA doctoral events and conferences as well as offer and provide more feedback opportunities for young scholars in the field of IB.
More information about both doctoral events will be available on the EIBA 2014 conference website; the submission deadline for thesis proposals is September 1, 2014. Note that students participating in the Doctoral Tutorial or the Doctoral Symposium are expected to register for the EIBA conference.
IBR & JIBS Paper Development Workshops
Among the featured EIBA 2014 pre-conference activities will be Paper Development Workshops for theInternational Business Review (IBR) and the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS). Authors who have not yet been published in the respective journal can submit their papers for the workshop of their choice; deadline September 1, 2014. Note that papers submitted to these workshops cannot also be presented at the conference.
For more information about the above pre-conference events, please visit the EIBA 2014 website.
Conference Venue
The EIBA 2014 conference will be held in Uppsala University’s main building and in the Centre for Economic Studies. The beautiful university main building and the Auditorium (Aula), built in the 1880s, will be the venue of the opening session and welcome reception on Thursday evening, December 11, 2014. On December 12and 13, delegates will be in the Centre for Economic Studies that will house the remaining plenary sessions – including a lecture by the 2014 Nobel prize winner in economics on December 13 – as well as the parallel competitive and workshop sessions. Both venues are within walking distance (5-10 minutes) of each other and are located close to the city centre, which is also the older part of Uppsala. To complete the conference, the gala dinner on Saturday evening will take place in Uppsala Castle, located on a hill overlooking the city centre.
The international airport of Stockholm (Arlanda) is located between Stockholm and Uppsala.
Several means of transportation will take participants directly to Uppsala within 30-50 minutes.
Hotel accommodation has been reserved in advance, ranging from low-budget to high-quality standards.
Conference Fees and Registration
The EIBA 2014 conference fee includes: conference participation, breaks and lunches, the opening reception, the gala dinner, the conference handbook and CD-ROM (including the proceedings), EIBA membership for 2015, and a one-year journal subscription to the International Business Review. There are reduced conference fees for PhD students and persons accompanying registered delegates who wish to attend the gala dinner.
Contact Information
Detailed information about EIBA 2014 Uppsala can be found on the conference website.
All related inquiries should be sent via e-mail to info@eiba2014.org.
EIBA President & 2014 Conference Chair: Rian Drogendijk (Uppsala University)
