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THE 2022 JIBS DECADE AWARD

 

The Selection Committee for the JIBS Decade Award is pleased to announce
that the 2012 JIBS article "What drives corporate social performance? The
role of nation-level institutions" by Ioannis Ioannou (London Business
School, UK) and George Serafeim (Harvard Business School, USA) has been
selected as the winner of the 2022 JIBS Decade Award.

 

The award, sponsored by Palgrave Macmillan, is designed to recognize the
most influential paper published in the Journal of International Business
Studies ten years prior and is presented at the annual AIB conference. In
order to be considered for the JIBS Decade Award, an article must be one of
the five most cited articles published in JIBS for the year being
considered. This year's Selection Committee members were Yadong Luo (Chair,
University of Miami, USA), the current AIB Program Chair Andrew Delios
(National University of Singapore, Singapore), and past AIB Program Chair
Gary Knight (Willamette University, USA). JIBS Editor-in-Chief Alain Verbeke
was an ex officio, non-voting committee member.

 

In recommending the award-winning article, the committee noted that, "This
article is the most cited article published in JIBS in 2012. It stands out
for several other reasons as well. 

 

"First, it is topical and timely, addressing a critical issue of concern to
the broad global society on environmental and climate protection and more
aggressive and conscious actions by MNEs to tackle this issue in the present
day. The study shows a strong alignment with, and a good example of,
responsible research for societal and public interests that we should all
care about. By highlighting the role of institutions, this article raises
the importance of MNEs' CSR and complementarity between their social
performance and economic performance. 

 

"Second, this study is thought-provoking, establishing a macro
(country-level) and micro (firm-level) link that crosses and integrates
multiple disciplines such as institutional economics, political science,
cultural research, and institutional theory. The authors demonstrate that
nation-level institutional variation along the political system, education
and labor system, financial system, and cultural system, significantly
impacts variations in corporation-level social performance. The work is a
good example, examining a bigger picture of IB and a particularly broader
spectrum of factors that affect social performance of MNEs.

 

"Third, this study is theoretically sound, with robust and exceptional
theory development. The article draws on appropriate theoretical lenses from
various fields, which reminds us that research needs to be skillfully and
systematically grounded in expository theoretical perspectives, including
theory from outside IB. The article provides sound answers to emergent
questions on the 'how and why' of an important phenomenon, with implications
well beyond IB. Corporate social performance is an under-researched topic,
about which there has been little prior theory or formal theorizing in IB.

 

"Fourth, this article is methodologically rigorous, offering excellent
research design, longitudinal data, multilevel analysis, and comparative
insights. It uses a sample of firms from 42 countries spanning seven years,
and constructs an annual composite corporate social performance (CSP) index
for each firm based on social and environmental metrics. Empirically, the
authors went further, comparing which dimension of national business systems
exerts a greater impact on CSP, which helps us better understand the
relative importance of different institutional metrics for social
performance of MNEs.   

 

"Finally, this study is exemplary, exhibiting ways of IB research to
contribute to both our scholarly community and the business/public society.
This article unveils the mechanisms through which nation-level institutions
within national business systems affect MNEs' corporate social performance.
The key findings from the study carry strong practical and policy
implications. For instance, it concludes that laws and regulations that
promote market competition are associated with a lower CSP mandate. When
managers have the power to take decisions that might not be in the best
interest of shareholders and potentially satisfy other stakeholders, CSP is
higher. Also, CSP is significantly higher for corporations in countries
where corruption is less widespread. In countries with a higher Union labor
density, corporations fare better in CSP, suggesting that unions put
pressure on corporations to improve the social benefits provided to workers,
and can also increase corporate awareness of environmental consequences. The
study also suggests that the efficiency of the capital allocation process in
capital-market-based financial systems relative to credit-based systems
outweighs a potential negative impact on CSP due to the short-term focus of
firms.

 

"This study's key findings can be disseminated far and wide, to the
betterment of the world. The findings are fascinating and valuable, and at
times, surprising and controversial. Thus, the article can foster valuable,
thought-provoking discussion and debate by scholars, policymakers, and
students. The work can serve as assigned reading, leading to important
classroom discussion across a range of curricula. In this way, the article
serves to advance not only scholarship, but also education, on a topic of
vital importance to people around the world. For public policymakers, the
article highlights key levers that can be examined, country-by-country, to
deepen understanding on political, educational, labor, financial, and even
cultural institutions, and how they might be transformed in order to achieve
corporate social performance goals worldwide. The article also provides deep
insights for practitioners, guiding them toward more intelligent and
practical approaches, including the development of new business models, to
advance corporate social performance goals at the firm level."

 

A session will be held at the upcoming 2022 AIB Annual Meeting in Miami, in
which the authors and invited discussants will comment on the paper. A
reception honoring the Decade Award winning paper and its authors will also
be held as part of the closing reception at the conference. We hope that you
will join us in Miami to attend these events; the date and times will be
available at https://www.aib.world/events/2022/ when the conference program
is finalized.

 

A retrospective by the authors, together with discussants' commentaries,
will be published in the first issue of the 2023 volume of the Journal of
International Business Studies.

 


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