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THE 2023 JIBS DECADE AWARD

 

The Selection Committee for the JIBS Decade Award is pleased to announce
that the 2013 JIBS article “Global cities and multinational enterprise
location strategy” by Anthony Goerzen (Queen's University, Canada),
Christian Geisler Asmussen (Copenhagen Business School, Denmark) and Bo
Bernhard Nielsen (University of Sydney, Australia) has been selected as the
winner of the 2023 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 Kaz Asakawa (Keio
University, Japan), Jeremy Clegg (University of Leeds, UK), Catherine Welch
(Trinity College Dublin, Republic of Ireland), and Rosalie L. Tung (Simon
Fraser University, Canada; Committee Chair and JIBS Editor-in-Chief Elect).

 

In recommending the award-winning article, the Committee noted that, “This
article is among the most cited articles published in JIBS in 2013.” It
stands out for several other reasons as well.

 

“First, Goerzen, Asmussen and Nielsen’s study of the importance of global
cities to MNEs’ choice of locations was both topical and novel. Their study
drew upon Kaigai Shinshutsu Kigyo Soran, a database on Japanese MNEs and
their overseas subsidiaries around the world, to support their reasoning
that ‘global connectedness, cosmopolitanism, and abundance of advanced
producer services’ assist MNEs in overcoming the liability of foreignness.
The paper broke new ground by going beyond the country or even regional
level in the study of location choices. By examining a variety of
determinants of an MNE’s propensity to locate its foreign subsidiaries
inside or outside a global city, it highlights the complexity of MNE
location decisions and draws attention to the need for IB scholars to take a
broader and more inclusive approach to the understanding of MNE
operations/phenomena and their executives’ decision-making processes.

 

“Second, this study is a well-executed piece of empirical research that
establishes a macro (sub-national-level) and micro (firm-level) link that
crosses and integrates multiple disciplines such as economic geography and
business strategy. It used multi-level modeling in order to account for the
nested nature of subsidiaries within MNEs. This methodological contribution
is worth noting. 

 

“Third, even though developments since the publication of the paper in 2013
may render a very different roster of world cities in 2023 and beyond, the
attention drawn to the characteristics of ‘global connectedness,
cosmopolitanism, and abundance of advanced producer services’ challenges us
to rethink about the future of global cities. Instead of global cities, will
there be hubs based on geographic regions and/or ideological leanings, such
as the Washington consensus vis-à-vis the Beijing consensus? If so, what are
the characteristics of these global cities, regional hubs and/or ideological
hubs? This can pave the way for new directions in research on the global
economy and how MNEs adapt to these new realities.

 

“Fourth, this study’s key findings can foster valuable, thought-provoking
discussion and debate by scholars, business executives, and students. As an
assigned reading for students, it can lead to important classroom discussion
across a range of curricula, thereby advancing education on a topic of
enduring relevance to people around the world. The article also provides
useful insights for business executives in their decision making.”

 

The Committee recognizes that the findings of this study will need to be
updated and re-evaluated against the current realities of, first,
digitalization that has given new meaning to the measure and
operationalization of interconnectedness; and second, geopolitical tensions
and global disruptions that may have contributed to the bifurcation of the
global economy along ideological lines and techno-nationalism. The former
development, digitalization and its impact on MNEs, is an important one and
explains for the addition of “Industry 4.0” as a new sub-domain by the
incoming JIBS editorial team. The new reality of bifurcation challenges a
fundamental assumption behind the original concept of global cities, namely
the continued liberalization of the world economy to bring about a “world
that is flat”, to paraphrase Thomas L. Friedman. Discussions around global
disruptions and their implications for international business align well
with the theme of the Academy of International Business 2023 conference,
“International Business Resilience under Global Disruptions.”

 

A session will be held at the upcoming 2023 AIB Annual Meeting in Warsaw, 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 Warsaw to attend these events; the date and times will be
available at  <https://www.aib.world/events/2023/>
https://www.aib.world/events/2023/ when the conference program is finalized.

 

A retrospective by the authors, together with discussants’ commentaries,
will be published in the first issue of the 2024 volume of the Journal of
International Business Studies.

 


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