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/ 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.