*Call for Papers Special Issue:*
*Novel methodological approaches to study socio-political risks *
*Guest Co-Editors: *
Tatiana Vashchilko (University of Calgary, Canada),
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George O. White III (University of Michigan – Flint, USA)
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Andreea Mihalache-OKeef (Roanoke College, USA)
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Crystal Jiang (Bryant University, USA),
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Irem Demirkan (Loyola University Maryland, USA)
Email: [log in to unmask]
Asda Chintakananda (National Institute of Development Administration,
Thailand)
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*Supervising Editor: *
Tazeeb Rajwani (University of Surrey, UK)
*Deadline for submission:* November 1, 2021
(a special workshop for the SI will be planned in the future)
*Background and rationale for the special issue*
The goal of this special issue is to showcase a wide range of
discipline-specific and interdisciplinary methodologies for studying
socio-political risks (SPRs). This issue will bring together a selection of
papers that can provide a more granular understanding of methodological
issues in complex and fast-changing contexts.
The socio-political environment is a major source of objective and
subjective uncertainties for international business and multinational
enterprise (MNE) operations (John and Lawton, 2008; Kobrin, 1979; Lawton,
Doh, and Rajwani, 2014) resulting in additional transaction costs that tend
to be inherently higher in more complex systems of exchange and greater
competition for scarce resources (e.g., North, 1991). With important
megatrends changing the SPR landscape such as increased complexity of the
international political environment (Teng et al. 2017), growing
efficiencies of supply chains, and the tech revolution transforming these
global phenomenon (Rice and Zegart, 2018), scholars have expanded their
inquiry into different types of SPRs such as corruption (Karhunen
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1075425311000676#!>
and Ledyaeva
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1075425311000676#!>,
2012; Sartor and Beamish, 2017), legal uncertainty (White et al., 2015),
socio-political violence (Oh and Oetzel, 2017), military conflict (Arikan
et al., 2019; Li and Vashchilko, 2010), natural disasters (Oetzel and Oh,
2014), and property rights violations (Jiang et al., 2011), while also
exploring ways to mitigate exposure to SPRs (John and Lawton, 2017) and
turn what would otherwise be disadvantages into advantages (Darendeli and
Hill, 2016; Harvey and Novicevic, 2002) via, for example, developing
political capabilities (Schnyder and Sallai, 2020; White et al., 2018).
To identify and further study the complexities of SPRs require scholars to
more profoundly examine the inherent uncertainty associated with the
business environment (i.e., socio-politico-economic systems or structures),
which commands additional expertise in the corresponding disciplines (e.g.,
law, political science, sociology). Furthermore, to improve our
understanding of the integrated influences of SPR on managerial phenomena,
international managerial research should capitalize on methodological
advances across a wider range of disciplines (e.g., data science, political
science) to optimize cross-disciplinary access and usability of scientific
SPR information. SPR scholars have utilized diverse methodological
approaches in identifying SPRs and analyzing their impact on business
outcomes.
Yet, absent cohesive conceptualization, methodological issues associated
with operationalization and measurement of SPRs (and their types) abound
resulting in the inconclusiveness of empirical results concerning the
impact of SPRs on performance outcomes (Beugelsdijk et al., 2018; Cavusgil
et al., 2020; Magnusson and Tarverdi, 2020). With the understanding that
SPR measures often lack accuracy (Sottilotta 2015), scholars have started
to re-evaluate widely used measures of SPRs, including indicators of
institutional quality such as the Worldwide Governance Indicators
(WGI) (Magnusson
and Tarverdi, 2020). Dissatisfaction with the accuracy of aggregate SPR
indicators, especially in contexts exhibiting high socio-political
uncertainty, has intensified the use of surveys, survey experiments, and
interviews to develop a better understanding of SPRs, their sources, and
implications for international management (Weber et al., 2020). These mixed
methods have proved to be especially valuable for capturing heterogeneous
exposure of MNEs to SPRs across geography, industry, and other firm
attributes as well as variations in corporate political activities (Dang et
al., 2020; Schnyder and Sallai, 2020; White et al., 2018). However, much
more can be done to further illuminate and advance these methodological
approaches.
This SI will therefore offer a platform and forum for scholars to
facilitate this process and elucidate novel methodological approaches to
study SPRs. With specific attention to theory-driven methodological
approaches of SPR analysis, the main focus of the SI is to foster an
interdisciplinary conversation over novel methodologies in examining SPRs
and MNE strategic responses to the complexities of international and
national operating environments. The SI will provide an opportunity for:
(1) the systematic examination of pros and cons of a range of novel
qualitative and quantitative methodologies for advancement of SPR
knowledge; and (2) the identification of state-of-the-art analytical tools
to study different types of SPR in diverse contexts. This SI will therefore
facilitate interdisciplinary dialogue and has the potential to generate new
theoretical explanations of important SPR-related phenomena combined with
appropriate choices of analytical tools and novel applications of existing
methods from other disciplines. Thus, in the long term, the SI should (1)
lead to the improvement in theoretical and empirical research across
multiple methodological dimensions such as efficiency, accuracy, and the
overall quality of SPR research; as well as (2) drive the improvement in
the ability of scholars to assess the danger of existing risks and to
identify emergent ones.
We envision the SI to engage scholars from different disciplines in the
discussion of novel methodological approaches that can connect and
integrate the ever-increasing volumes of discipline specific SPR knowledge
important for international management. These approaches will improve the
efficiency, accuracy, and overall quality of SPR research but also serve
practitioners (through future scholarship) interested in building
socio-political risk assessment and resilience by providing a more
comprehensive basis for managerial decision-making, especially in the
situations characterized by high levels of uncertainty. The relatively
insular insights of discipline-rooted research ought to confront and
complement each other; building bridges across disciplines that will
improve our comprehension of the many manifestations of SPRs, its sources,
and implications for international management practices. Thus,
international management scholars will have a better understanding of
methodologies and analytical tools that can be utilized in SPR research.
*Potential Topics*
This special issue welcomes submissions with an interdisciplinary
perspective. Papers could incorporate one or multiple aspects of novel
methodological approaches for identifying and explaining SPRs, including
but not limited to:
· Leveraging theory and methodology from several disciplines to
gain better insight into different types of SPRs and the strategic
responses of business and society
· New data sources and analytical approaches in law, political
science, sociology, international business, and other disciplines to study
changes in national and international socio-political environments and
their impact on MNEs at
different levels of analysis (manager-, firm-, industry-, or
country-level)
· Fine-grained measures of different types of SPR and their
management by MNEs (e.g., political instability, terrorism, the rule of
law, international military conflict, indirect expropriation, civil
conflict, revolution, bureaucracy,
corruption, political ties)
· Leveraging and/or comparing different types of data (primary or
secondary) suited for identifying and analyzing types of SPRs
· Systematically evaluating the reliability of sources of
information to assess risks in foreign markets
· Data collection and analysis of risk perceptions in various
contexts
· Taxonomy development for SPRs and their management (e.g.,
corporate political activity as a political risk management tool)
· Mixed-method approaches to identify SPR types in lesser-known
contexts
· Development of new metrics to analyze types of SPR (e.g.,
intensity of political ties) or potential of a country’s political
environment to generate political risks (e.g., dynamic factor analysis)
· Identification if and how the COVID-19 pandemic may modify SPR
types and their impact on MNE political behavior and/or international
management practices
*Submission Process*:
The deadline of paper submission to this special issue is *1 November 2021*.
A special workshop for the SI will be planned in the future. All papers
will be subject to double‐blind review process. Papers for this issue
should be prepared as per the Journal’s guidelines available at:
https://www.elsevier.com/journals/journal-of-international-management/1075-4253/guide-for-authors
Authors should submit an electronic copy of their manuscript via the
journal’s online submission system via
https://www.evise.com/profile/#/INTMAN/login
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