Many of you will know that Alan Rugman had edited The Multinational Business Review (MBR) for the last 6 years. Alan had wanted to establish an academic journal that sought to address issues relating to international business, both from a management and economics perspective.
In keeping with this spirit, from the first issue of 2015 (Volume 23), the journal will be co-edited by Mark Casson, Rajneesh Narula and Alain Verbeke. We reckon it will take three of us to fill Alan’s rather large shoes!
At the same time, we also want to take advantage of this change in management to relaunch MBR. We will be renewing the editorial board and the editorial team over the next few months - please stay tuned for updates.
Spirit of the 'renewed' MBR
All three of us have an explicit preference for papers that take a strong conceptual stand and are grounded in theory.We welcome papers that challenge conventional wisdom and received theory, believing as we do that new evidence and changing circumstances require us to continually question the validity of theories and frameworks, and their underlying assumptions.
We also seek innovative papers that provide improved description, explanation and prediction of the behavior of economic actors in the international environment, including (but not limited to) work on: the strategy and organization of multinational enterprise, international business history, geography of international business, and the impact of international business on economic growth and development. Specific topics of interest include innovation, entrepreneurship, knowledge transfer, value chain coordination and the performance implications of international business strategies. Conceptual papers and those that examine competing perspectives and viewpoints are always welcome.
The editors are also keen on submissions that examine the evidence systematically, building upon and testing existing models and frameworks. Such papers should be able to suggest managerial, economic or government policy recommendations built upon sound empirical evidence, whether qualitative or quantitative. We will still welcome critical surveys of the literature, but they must demonstrate a high degree of originality. We will no longer publish book reviews.
Novelties in the line-up
We shall be expanding our publications to include two new types of articles, apart from the usual refereed articles:
1. Short, to-the-point and non-technical editorial opinions (op-eds). These will address new and important issues that deserve immediate attention, which will be lightly refereed. Sometimes a significant or controversial new theoretical or methodological issue thrusts itself upon the reality of IB. New ideas need to be presented to the field community in a fairly rapid way, and be accessible not just to the academic specialist, but also to the practitioner, the politician, the policy-maker with a minimum of turgidity and as little fuss as possible. Such submissions should be 4000 words or less. Contributors are invited to submit an 500 word outline to the editors for consideration.
2. Focused debate forums. The first issue of every year will have a debate forum - a set of ‘think pieces’ commissioned on a specific topic, with short 'op-ed' contributions of 2k-3k words that highlight multiple angles to an important 'big issue' in IB. We plan to publish one such debate forum in every volume, beginning with Volume 23, issue 1, 2015, revisiting Dunning's classic motives.
Call for special issues
We are seeking innovative and bold thinkers to propose special issues. We have a detailed set of instructions available at:
http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/news_story.htm?id=5713
Rajneesh Narula (on behalf of the editorial team)
Professor of International Business Regulation
Director, John H. Dunning Centre for International Business
Henley Business School
University of Reading, UK
