CfP. Corporate responsibility: In the dilemma between trust and fake?

Call for Papers: Corporate responsibility: In the dilemma between trust and fake?

Guest Editors:

• Simon Fietze, University of Southern Denmark
• Wenzel Matiaske, Helmut-Schmidt-University/University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg (Germany)
• Roland Menges, Technical University Clausthal (Germany)

Special Issue
Trust is the currency that creates markets. This is knowledge of the merchants at the latest since modern markets have emerged along the medieval trade routes. Quality and reliability in the business are also building blocks of trust and the assumption of responsibility for the social and ecological consequences of entrepreneurial activity. Whether the latter should be integrated into social and legal relations and norms in the form of voluntary corporate responsibility, has been the subject of economic discussion since the beginnings of the discipline and since the separation of the spheres of economic and moral action in the Scottish moral economy.

Over the past decades, both supra-national organisations such as the UN and the EU have been focusing on soft law – from the global compact through the AA1000 to the Green Paper of the EU Commission – as well as the national states, to promote social and environmental responsibility for companies in the age of globalisation. These initiatives have led to lively activities and debates both in the business world and in different scientific disciplines. For companies, it has now become a “fashion” to campaign social and ecological responsibility using the concept of “Corporate Social Responsibility”. This commitment has meanwhile led to the fact that CSR activities should partly contribute to value creation instead of aligning them with corporate objectives and values. Such a development leads to the loss of trust and the assumption of responsibility becomes a “fake”.

Against this backdrop, some of the social and economic observers remained sceptical, advocating tougher legal norms or fiscal implications. Finally, lawyers pointed out that (successful) standardisations often develop not only from the "top" but also from the “bottom”, i.e. they emerge from the action routines of the economic actors as emergent effects. However, not only the recent scandals – from the ENRON case to the VW case – raise questions about the effectiveness of co-operative self-commitment as well as external control.

Moreover, corporate responsibility is related to the concept of consumer responsibility. Whereas market-optimists believe that reliable changes in consumption patterns rely on responsible individual action, more market-skeptics warn of a counterproductive “privatisation of sustainability”.

In this light, this special issue will be on theoretical and empirical contributions to the topic “Corporate responsibility: In the dilemma between trust and fake?” from economic, sociological, (economic) historical and legal perspectives. Possible topics are:

Economic and history of ideas cases and questions of corporate responsibility

• The “pseudo” corporate responsibility 
• Organisational and sociological theories and findings on corporate responsibility
• Theory and empiricism of the audit 
• Theoretical and empirical studies on consumer responsibility 
• Criminal law considerations for corporate actors 
• Institutional factors of corporate responsibility 
• The trust of social entrepreneurship 
• This is not an exhaustive list. 

Deadline

Full paper for this special issue of Management Revue must be submitted by September 30th, 2017. All contributions will be subject to a double-blind review. Papers invited to a ‘revise and resubmit’ are due January 31st, 2018. Please submit your papers electronically via the online submission system using ‘SI Corporate Responsibility’ as article section.

Hoping to hear from you!
Simon Fietze
Wenzel Matiaske
Roland Menges

CfP. Strategies in the Global Digital Economy

Strategies in the Global Digital Economy

Call for papers for a Special Issue of 

Global Strategy Journal 

Deadline for submissions: April 15-30, 2018

Special Issue Editors:

• Erkko Autio, Imperial College Business School
• Ram Mudambi, Fox School of Business, Temple University
• Youngjin Yoo, Weatherhead School of Business, Case Western Reserve University 

Objective of this Special Issue:

Spatial transaction costs – the costs of undertaking business transactions across geographic space – have been declining continuously since the beginning of the industrial revolution. However, with the digital transformation of society, these declines have become exponential. Since the introduction of the integrated circuit in 1958, Moore’s Law has consistently held, with speed and processing power doubling roughly every 18 months (Moore, 1965).1 According to Brynjolfsson and McAfee (2014), the point of inflection associated with Moore’s Law dynamics was reached about 2006. They argue that the enormous and accelerating increases in digital capabilities since that time have changed the global business landscape in fundamental ways. They have enabled the flowering of a wide range of entirely new industries from social networking to online entertainment, as well as the re-launching of many traditional industries from taxicabs to lodging as platform businesses. 

Digitalization is transforming how firms organize for value creation and delivery (Tilson, Lyytinen, & Sorensen, 2010; Yoo, Boland Jr, Lyytinen, & Majchrzak, 2012). Underpinning this transformation is the constantly increasing sophistication and ubiquitous availability of digital infrastructures, which enable ever more sophisticated interactions between transacting parties regardless of geographic location. As services and interactions are increasingly digitalized and modularized (McDermott, Mudambi & Parente, 2013), and as digitalization increasingly permeates even physical products, enabling the connectivity of these to digital platforms, new business models are enabled that have the potential to scale globally – and to disrupt established incumbents. The car sharing company Uber and the home sharing firm Airbnb are just two well-known examples of the resulting globally disruptive business models that have transformed previously highly local service sectors. 

The global reach and disruptive potential of digitally enabled business model innovation creates a distinct challenge for global strategy research. Although the more disruptive wave of digitally enabled business models started already in the mid-2000s, global strategy and While many experts believe that the continual shrinking of transistors is reaching physical limits (e.g., Simonite, 2016), other technologies are appearing to maintain the general speed and processing power gains at the rate predicted by Moore’s Law.

international business research have been slow to address this phenomenon, in spite of increasing anecdotal evidence that the digitalization phenomenon is directly challenging and even undermining received theories of the internationalization of firms. When ubiquitous digital platforms enable direct and immediate interactions between users and producers located in different sides of the planet, what are the implications of this for the internationalization process theory and to the importance of foreign market knowledge? When firms can deliver services from distance, without necessarily locating any physical resources in the country where the service is offered, what are the implications of this for network models of internationalization? When a globally transacting business can be coordinated and managed from a single location, what are the implications of this for the very meaning of internationalization and globalization?

Although many digital business models are inherently international, global strategy and internationalization research have been relatively slow to address this phenomenon. While there have been numerous, often case-based studies focusing on ‘internet businesses’ and ‘e- business’, and systematic accounts of how digitalization challenges received internationalization theories have been few.

This special issue seeks to address both theoretical and empirical implications of digitalization for global strategies and internationalization. These are a few topics and research questions that papers submitted to the special issue can address: 

• Digitalisation is transforming the patterns and sometimes the very meaning of the internationalization of firms (new ventures)

In particular, disintermediation (the ability of service and resource providers to directly engage and interact with end users virtually regardless of geographic distance) is enabling productive cross-border interactions in ways mostly unanticipated in received theories of the internationalization of firms.

• The breadth and immediacy of one-to-one cross-border interactions is opening up new ways of creating, delivering, and appropriating value, driving a wave of international business model innovation.
• The emergence of global digital platforms is enabling value creation and capture on a global scale, sometimes even global market dominance by a single firm 
• Digitalisation is also enabling hitherto unseen opportunities to scale up business models in a global scale
• Digitalization creates unforeseen interactions between local and global competitions, some of which are caused by the mobilization of local physical assets via global digital infrastructure 
• Digitalization and global scalability of business models. On the one hand, digitalization tends to reduce dependency on location-specific assets thanks to, e.g., easily accessible and scalable cloud services that can be tapped in case of rapid growth. On the other hand, new barriers to scalability may arise, in the form of, e.g., regulatory barriers or gaps. When can digitalisation eliminate access to local resources as a constraint to internationalization, and what are the new barriers to foreign market entry? 
• Implications of digitalization for the internationalization process. How does digitalization impact, e.g., entry mode choice, foreign market learning, liabilities of foreignness and outsidership, and the feasibility of gradual and ‘born global’ modes of internationalization?
• Digitalisation and global value co-creation. How do the characteristics of digitalization, such as disintermediation and generativity shape and extend opportunities for value co-creation over national borders? 
• Digitalisation, value bundling, and cross-border value co-creation. As digitalization enables novel ways of functionality bundling around digital platforms unconstrained by geographical location, what are the implications for cross-border value co- creation? 
• Digitalization, disintermediation, and cross-border business model innovation. As disintermediation enables direct and virtually immediate contact with end users regardless of location, this should enable international new ventures to implement ‘lean entrepreneurship’ practices such as business model experimentation in cross- border settings. How can cross-border experimentation be harnessed for the discovery of robust and globally scalable business models? 
• Digitalization, asset specificity, and the transformation of foreign market entry modes. As digitalization reduces asset specificity, it also should reduce dependency on local resources for value delivery and capture in a given country market. How will foreign market entry mode choice be affected by this development? 
• Digitization in the production of tangible products, especially the effects of technologies like 3D printing, robotics and artificial intelligence on the location dimension of international business. 

Submission Process:

Between April 15 and 30, 2018, authors should submit their manuscripts online via the Global Strategy Journal submission system: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/gsj. To ensure that all manuscripts are correctly identified for consideration for this Special Issue, it is important that authors select “Digital Economy special issue” in the submission process

Manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with Global Strategy Journal Guide for Authors available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2042- 5805/homepage/ForAuthors.html. All submitted manuscripts will be subject to the Journal’s double-blind review process.

Authors who have any questions may direct them to the Special Issue Editors by email: Erkko Autio (erkko.autio@imperial.ac.uk), Ram Mudambi (ram.mudambi@temple.edu) and Youngjin Yoo (youngjin@case.edu).

References:

Brynjolfsson E. and McAfee, A. 2014. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progess and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. W.W.Norton, New York.

McDermott, G., Mudambi, R., & Parente, R. 2013. Strategic modularity and the architecture of the multinational firm. Global Strategy Journal, 3(1): 1-7.

Moore, G. 1965. Cramming more components onto integrated circuits. Electronics, 38(8), April 19.
Simonite, T. 2016. Moore’s Law is dead. Now what? MIT Technology Review, May 13.
Tilson, D., Lyytinen, K., & Sorensen, C. 2010. Desperately Seeking the Infrastructure in IS Research:

Conceptualization of "Digital Convergence" As Co-Evolution of Social and Technical Infrastructures.

Paper presented at the System Sciences (HICSS), 2010 43rd Hawaii International Conference on.
Yoo, Y., Boland Jr, R. J., Lyytinen, K., & Majchrzak, A. 2012. Organizing for innovation in the digitized world.

Organization Science, 23(5): 1398-1408.

____

CfP. International Journal of Transitions and Innovation Systems. Innovation in Latin America

International Journal of Transitions and Innovation Systems

Call for Papers for Special Issue on: “Innovation in Latin America”

Guest Editors

• Prof. Jerry Haar, Florida International University, USA
• Prof. Robert E. Grosse, Thunderbird School of Global Management, USA 

The aim of this special issue is to attract research that addresses and discusses the emergence, status and outlook for innovation in Latin America embodied in its many aspects and dimensions. The transformational (and disruptive) prowess of globalisation continues to impact nearly every nation on the globe. Industrialised and developing countries in every region are experiencing its effects economically, socially, and politically. While both the public and private sectors have, indeed, allocated greater resources to boost growth (and profitability), in manufacturing, services, and natural resources, sustaining competitive levels of performance is more and more difficult. The recognised solution for countries, industries, and firms is to innovate.

Innovation is impacting every region and functional dimension of the global economy. It is an essential driver of economic productivity, social progress, and ultimately human achievement. Innovation is inextricably tied to success and profit, whether the enterprise is a technological giant like Microsoft or Siemens; a natural resources firm like CVRD or BHP Billiton; a conglomerate like Samsung or GE; or a small or medium-sized global enterprise. 

With reference to Latin America, it is the second most entrepreneurial region in the world, according to the World Bank. Its Internet and mobile density are higher than the world average, and the accelerated pace of start-ups - both tech and non-tech based - has been occurring irrespective of economic and political ups and downs in the region. Last year, start-ups in Latin American ballooned to 1,333 and accelerators to 62, with investment approaching $32 million. 

Within this context the ecosystem of innovation in Latin America is built upon the interrelationship between three drivers: national policy (although subnational policies are important, as well), facilitating institutions (e.g. science parks, R&D labs, accelerators, incubators), and firm-level innovation. Each continues to shape the competitiveness of countries and regions in the hemisphere, as well. 

There is a real challenge to innovation in Latin America in that the level of R&D activity is far below that in the Triad countries (US, Japan, and EU), as well as far below that in Eastern Europe and developing Asia. It would be useful to see some discussion of how Latin American companies and governments can stimulate more R&D – as well as pursuing even greater innovation in business models and practices, as evidenced by the high level of entrepreneurship noted above.

Subject Coverage

Topics 

include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Innovation in the structure, organisation and management of the firm 
• Product, process, service and business model innovation 
• Macro-level economic and regulatory policies that impact innovativeness 
• New thinking on innovation in the services sector 
• Innovation in HR policies and practices 
• Open Innovation 
• Innovation in export-oriented small and medium size firms 
• How do we measure innovation? 

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. (N.B. Conference papers may only be submitted if the paper has been completely re-written and if appropriate written permissions have been obtained from any copyright holders of the original paper).

All papers are refereed through a peer review process.
All papers must be submitted online. Please read our Submitting articles page.

If you have any queries concerning this special issue, please email the Guest Editors Prof. Jerry Haar at haarj@fiu.edu and Prof. Robert E. Grosse at grosser@global.t-bird.edu  .

Important Dates

• Submission of manuscripts: 31 December, 2017 
• Notification to authors: 15 March, 2018
• Final versions due: 15 May, 2018

CfP: Global Strategy in the Age of Skepticism of Globalization

Global Strategy in the Age of Skepticism of Globalization

Call for papers for a Special Issue of 

Global Strategy Journal

Submission period: December 1-15, 2017

Special Issue Editors:

• Alvaro Cuervo-Cazurra, Northeastern University 
• Yves Doz, INSEAD 
• Ajai Gaur, Rutgers University 

The Objective of this Special Issue:

Globalization, the increasing connection and integration of economies and societies around the world, has seen ebbs and flows during history. In recent times, we witnessed an increase in globalization, thanks to the twin engines of technological advances and economic liberalization. Technological advances in transportation, such as containerization and cargo jets, and in communication technologies, such as computers and the internet, have facilitated the interaction and coordination of activities across national borders, the growth of global value chains and suppliers’ networks, and the reduction of the costs of operating at a distance. Economic liberalization with reductions in governmental and institutional barriers to the free movement of capital, ideas and people across national borders, pro-market reforms, the integration of transition economies and the expansion of free trade agreements, enabled the growth of international trade and the expansion of global firms. The result of these processes has been an increasing interest in international business and advances in the theory of the multinational firm and of global ecosystems, as activities that previously were done within national borders have spread across countries.

However, globalization has brought not only benefits but also costs. On the one hand, there are numerous benefits in the form of lower-cost products and services as a result of the gains from comparative advantage and specialization, and more innovative products and services as a result of global learning and the rapid spread of innovations and technologies across borders. On the other hand, there are also costs in the form of increased competition on domestic companies and workers, who previously were shielded by barriers against foreign products and companies, and in the form of new technologies that have altered traditional careers and expectations regarding relationships between workers, citizens, and firms. Many perceive globalization as a threat to wellbeing. 

Even if some Luddites want to block technological progress, technological advances are difficult to constrain given the ease of the diffusion of technologies, especially nowadays as information is easily accessible thanks to the internet. However, the same cannot be said of economic liberalization and the reduction of barriers to trade and increased economic integration. Those who have been harmed or felt harmed because of globalization, and the labor costs arbitrage it enabled, can place pressure on governments to limit exposure to foreign companies, workers, and investments. Some governments have responded to these pressures by reintroducing tight constraints on the activities of foreign firms and the free movement of capital and labor across borders. What initially were fringe movements of skeptics of globalization that emerged vocally at the end of the 1990s and early 2000s, have become influential movements and political parties that have altered government policy in the 2010s. Some examples are the decision of Britain in 2016 to leave the European Union or the decision of the US government in 2017 not to join the 12-country Transpacific Partnership free trade agreement. However, the debate has become complicated. It seems to have moved away from the polar views of being for or against globalization, and has become more nuanced with arguments on the particular terms of globalization for the country and individuals, including new considerations such as environmental protection, transport costs, climate change, and labor rights. Additionally, there are new conflicting views regarding globalization, with some being in favor of bilateral and regional integration while being against multilateral and global integration, and others promoting the opposite view. 

This skepticism of globalization presents interesting challenges to our current understanding of international business and more broadly to the theory of the multinational organization. Skepticism creates a new source of uncertainty not only from the government but also from citizens on the ability of multinationals to operate across countries and be accepted in host countries as well as at home. Managers of multinationals are facing a questioning of the activities of their companies in the countries in which they operate, and a need to justify the benefits that their companies bring to each country; previously, such justification could be assumed to exist in the form of better products for consumers and employment for local workers. Moreover, this skepticism creates uncertainty not only by the imposition of new constraints on the activities of the firm, but also over the interpretation and application of current rules. Thus, managers of multinationals are now facing new scrutiny over their ability to close down existing operations and move activities to new locations, as some foreign firms experienced in India; to acquire domestic companies, as many Chinese companies have experienced in the US; or in more extreme cases, the nationalization of their subsidiaries, as happened in Argentina and Venezuela. 

Hence, in this special issue of Global Strategy Journal, we want to gain a better understanding of how the skepticism of globalization is altering the way in which we should think about the behavior of multinational firms and the theory of the multinational. Skepticism towards globalization alters decision-making in multinationals as it establishes new constraints on the operations of firms and introduces uncertainty regarding the future viability of investments and activities. Researchers need to understand the extent to which choices now made by managers in global companies and in their networks of suppliers, customers and partners reflect these new constraints and uncertainties. Skepticism towards globalization also changes the relationship between the multinational firms and the broader society, in which managers have to deal with interest groups, and a more generally diffused dislike and suspicion toward multinationals and their operations, both abroad and at home, forcing them to rethink their market and nonmarket strategies.

We are looking for papers that provide a deeper and more nuanced comprehension of the theoretical mechanisms that underpin the theory of the multinational and the relationship between multinational firms and their context under the influence of skepticism and rising uncertainty and ambiguity about globalization. We consider multinationals in a loose sense to include not only corporations that control operations in multiple countries, but also companies that rely on global supply networks or serve a global portfolio of customers without controlling operations abroad, as well as not-for-profit organizations that operate in multiple countries. We welcome theoretical papers that outline how we should think about the multinational firm in the new context of skepticism, large sample empirical studies that test theory-driven arguments of the relationship between skepticism of globalization and firm behavior, or case studies that identify new concepts and relationships underpinning changes in the context of operation and behavior of a firm driven by skepticism of globalization. We particularly welcome studies that outline bridges to disciplines outside the traditional economic basis of global strategy studies such as legal studies, political economy, institutional theory, organizational theory, sociology, psychology, or history.

The following are some of the questions that studies analyzing the relationship between skepticism of globalization and global strategy might analyze. This list is only presented as an illustration of topics rather than an outline of the boundaries of the special issue:

• 1. How do we understand globalization, its dimensions and their impact on firms? How do regional versus global relationships play a role in this debate? 
• 2. How do changes for and against globalization among various constituencies alter the assumptions and predictions of theories of the multinational? What is the role of the broader context of the firm on the theory of strategic management? 
• 3. How do pro-market reversals and economic nationalisms change the predictions of studies on premarket reforms and economic liberalization? How do different types of companies by ownership (private, state, family, diffused, groups) react to skepticism of globalization? Do we see the return of “multi-domestic” MNCs? 
• 4. How do local competitors take advantage of this growing skepticism and the threat to continued globalization it portends? 
• 5. What are the consequences of this skepticism on increasing complex global supply chains, and on local firms that are partners in such supply chain networks? 
• 6. How do new constraints on the operations of firms alter their strategies? What type of reorganization of activities within the multinationals, their networks of suppliers, customers and partners, and across countries are most appropriate for these constraints? 
• 7. What strategies can managers of global firms deploy to face the increased skepticism of globalization? What are the most appropriate market and non-market strategies that manager can implement to deal with new governmental constraints or new customer and citizens demands? 
• 8. How can managers influence the processes of skepticism and counter changing attitudes of government officials, workers, and citizens? 
• 9. How do historical changes in favor of and against globalization help us better understand the strategies that managers can implement to deal with current events? How do attitudes differ across locations and time and what are the lessons that can be learned when establishing strategies? 
• 10. How do differences in the demographic, economic, political, and social situations and relationships among countries explain the attitudes toward globalization and their impacts on firms? 
• 11. How do for-profit and non-for-profit organizations are affected and react to skepticism of globalization? What are the differences in their strategies? 
• 12. What are the underlying assumptions on the relationships between organizations and their context in current models of firms and multinationals and how are these challenges with the attitudes of government officials and citizens? How can these be reconciled? 
• 13. How do changes in laws and their implementation alter contracts and transaction costs and how can companies devise strategies to addresses these legal changes? 

Authors working on submissions to the special issue are welcome to contact the guest editors if they have doubts about the appropriateness of the topic they want to analyze in regards to the theme of the special issue. 

Submission Process:

Between December 1 and 15, 2017, authors should submit their manuscripts online via the Global Strategy Journal submission system: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/gsj. To ensure that all manuscripts are correctly identified for consideration for this Special Issue, please click the “Special Issue Article” when selecting the “Article Type” step in the submission process

Manuscripts should be prepared in accordance with the Global Strategy Journal Guide for Authors available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2042-5805/homepage/ForAuthors.html. 

All submitted manuscripts will be subject to the journal’s double-blind review process.

We may organize a workshop designed to facilitate the development of papers in 2018. Authors of manuscripts that have progressed through the revision process will be invited to it. Presentation of their work at the workshop is neither a requirement for nor a promise of final acceptance of the paper in the Special Issue. 

If you have questions about the Special Issue, please direct them to the three guest editors: Alvaro Cuervo-Cazurra, Northeastern University (a.cuervocazurra@neu.edu), Yves Doz, INSEAD (yves.doz@insead.edu), and Ajai Gaur, Rutgers University (ajai@business.rutgers.edu).