Relaunching The Multinational Business Review: call for papers
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.
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