Dear Fellow AIB Scholars:
For those of you who, like me, are thinking about how to combine an interest in climate change, sustainability or the sustainable development goals with next year's Conference and track themes, I am looking for fellow contributors/participants on panels that can fit into tracks 2, 4, 7, 9 and 12. My ideas about a panel(s) for each track are described below.
Track 2: Managing the Value Chain and Operations
Papers/studies that examine how the use of information and data flows can be used to better manage a firm's
environmental footprint through a more efficient use of its value and supply chain. Papers/studies addressing how the coordination of a firm's value and supply chain can help a firm contribute to its own sustainability and/or the sustainable development goals also are of interest.
Track 4: Global Innovation and Knowledge Management
This panel would investigate how innovation and knowledge related to reducing a firm's carbon footprint, contributing to sustainable practices and supporting sustainable development is shared both within a firm and with outside entities such as external shareholders in home and host countries (for MNEs).
Track 7: International Corporate Governance and Financial Management
Thanks in large part to activist shareholders and socially conscious NGOs, firms are beginning to address how they can be more inclusive in their governance practices. It is possible that as a firm becomes more actively engaged in the achievement of the sustainable development goals, it will need to broaden its governance structure to include a wider set of actors. A panel on this topic would consist of papers that address how governance is or might be changing as a result of sustainability-motivated actions.
Track 9: Emerging Markets and Emerging Market MNEs
There is a growing body of literature focusing on how climate change and sustainability related innovation and practices coming out of emerging markets and emerging market MNEs can be used as models for developed country MNEs. It would be interesting, I think, to have a panel that presents a spectrum of these kinds of innovations and practices, what makes them successful, and how they can be adapted to other economies.
Track 12:Conference regional track: Global/regional Integration and Disintegration
As governments and firms determine the strategies and actions they will take to address climate change and/or the sustainable development goals, they likely will be assessing what kinds of regional integration (trade, investment, etc.) makes sense, and whether or not existing forms of regional integration need to be abandoned. A panel on this issue would, I imagine, consist of speculative papers drawing from what is being experienced in different regional pacts (old and new) worldwide.
I realize that the deadline for submissions is just a month away, but if you are interested in forming a panel addressing any of these topics, please let me know as soon as possible. My role will be to organize the panel, creating an appropriate theme around the mix of papers/ideas received from AIB members, and taking responsibility for submitting the panel proposal. The ideas expressed above are not cut in stone, so if you have suggestions/ideas of your own, by all means express them
