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The possibility of a significant reversal of globalization has emerged recently as a central political issue with potentially fundamental economic consequences, reversing the trends towards greater openness and liberalization that have characterized world business since the Second World War. Such a major break away from past trends could have enormous consequences for all firms and especially for those engaged in international business. Against this backdrop, we propose to convene a symposium panel designed to deepen the understanding of the actual trajectory of globalization from multiple perspectives and draw the implications of these developments for the field of management. We do so with the aid of advanced data and empirical measures, as captured in the DHL Global Connectedness Index, which examines globalization based on the size and geography of international trade, capital, information, and people flows, offering a multi-dimensional representation of globalization worldwide and at the level of individual countries. Reflecting on the DHL Index empirical data, the panel will consider the trajectory of globalization from a variety of perspectives, historical and current, and will draw its implications for management research and practice. The panel will also outline likely future trajectories of globalization/de-globalization and draw their likely implications for strategy, public policy, knowledge-sourcing/innovation, and the rise of emerging/frontier markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our panel discussion will thoroughly examine the current state of knowledge in regional multinational enterprise (MNE) strategy, covering critical aspects like the regionalization vs. globalization debate, the impact of multinationality on MNE performance, regional strategies and subsidiary management, and the significance of institutional complexity. Beyond assessing existing knowledge, the panelists will also present future research questions, providing valuable guidance for scholars in advancing our understanding of regional MNE strategy. Recognizing the dynamic nature of international strategic management, our panel will incorporate emerging themes such as climate change, sustainability, and resilience into the discussion, ensuring our exploration remains at the forefront of addressing contemporary challenges. Leveraging their expertise, the panelists will organize presentations around key future research questions, offering a structured and insightful exploration of the pivotal issues shaping the future of regional MNE strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We apply the natural resource-based view (RBV) of the firm to a 17-year longitudinal data set of 117 FT500 companies to understand the influence geography and sector have on firms integrating a climate change focus into their business model. We base our analysis on information derived from the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). Our RBV-model captures a two-stage transformation process, which includes Walk I and Walk II. This process identifies the firm's changes in governance, information gathering, and managerial systems as an 'intermediate' step, i.e., Walk I. This step often precedes firms actually investing in changing products and production processes to complete the transition towards a more proactive state, i.e., Walk II. We find that firms with a head office in Europe have initiated investments earlier along Walk I than firms with a head office in North America and this extends to Walk II as well. However, by the end of the period included in our data set, there appears to be little difference anymore in the degree to which a climate change focus has been integrated into firm-level strategy along Walk I and Walk II. The sectoral affiliation also influences firm-level strategy and the speed and depth with which a climate change focus materializes over time. For instance, energy-related firms have integrated a climate change focus earlier than firms in business-to-consumer (B2C) sectors and have made deeper changes to their business models in terms of dedicated investments. Firms in B2C sectors have also added a climate change focus, but the changes they have made typically did not require the same depth of dedicated investments. Firms not included in either of the two above groups have somewhat lagged in the start of transition and occupy an intermediate position as to the level of change required for a Walk II transformation. Keywords Resource-Based View, Dynamic capabilities, Carbon Disclosure Project, Dynamic GISTe model, Data driven climate change strategies, FT500 longitudinal data base, Walk I and Walk II model, GISTe model, geographic and sectoral influences [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Review research including integrative reviews and meta-analyses has become a staple of knowledge production in management and organizational sciences. In this symposium, a panel comprised of editors of some of the most influential journals that publish review articles will discuss how to publish this form of scientific inquiry including the types of review research, their roles for the production of new knowledge and advancing theory and methodological approaches. They will provide scholars across all AOM divisions with advice and guidance for conducting and eventually publishing rigorous and impactful reviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firms and governments across the world face pressure to address climate change concerns. The International Energy Agency's latest report suggests that global economic recovery after the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the associated energy concerns in a fragile geopolitical context, and increased regulations to curb climate change have heightened the central role of energy as an important issue in its own right. Moreover, it is apparent that the projected energy demands are unsustainable for the global climate goals, which makes the shift towards renewable energy sources and low carbon solutions one of the most important global grand challenges of our time. Energy producers--from large multinational enterprises to clean tech startups--are at the center of this energy transition, but must make the transition from fossil fuels to renewables in the context of changing regulations, geopolitical tensions, and increasing energy demand. This panel symposium brings together leading scholars on this topic to share a lively discussion on management theory and practice related to the energy transition. The purpose of this panel symposium is to encourage diverse perspectives on the energy transition and stimulate research on this global grand challenge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a 17-year longitudinal data-driven application of the GISTe model aggregating data involving how firms adapt to climate change and decarbonization at five four-year intervals between 2004 and 2020. We apply the model to a cohort of 117 FT500 North American and European firms, by coding firm-level responses to the 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020 Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) database with high-quality information. The GISTe model comprises a two-stage process, namely Walk I and Walk II. Walk I represents devoting scarce resources to governance (G), information management (I), and systemic (S) capabilities. Walk II builds on Walk I by making technology investments (Te) and ultimately transforming firm behavior. Walk I investments initiate and prepare the firm to transition to a greater level of proactivity towards climate change, while long-term capital investments along Walk II lead to meaningful large and permanent reductions in the firm's carbon footprint and transforms the firm. Initiating the transition paradigm towards greater integration of climate change into a firm's business operations starts with the importance of climate change to the Board and top management C-suite team. This level has responsibility for the vision, allocation of scarce resources, and strategic direction of the firm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the backlash over the last decade, the last 70 years have demonstrated a megatrend with a systematic rise in the cross-border mobility and migration of skilled and unskilled workers, both through the use of expatriation by multinational enterprises (MNEs), as well as through migration. The global mobility of people is fundamental to a variety of theoretical IB issues and particularly for the MNE's ability to efficiently organize human capital across its internal network conferring competitive advantage. Lately, the COVID pandemic not only reduced both the frequency and extent of global mobility, but fundamentally questioned its need. In this panel we consider the influence of the global mobility of people on the spread, activities and performance of the MNE. The panelists will explore and debate this influence from different disciplinary areas (general IB theory, global innovation, knowledge-based view, international human resource management, international and cross-cultural management) and different levels of analysis (micro, meso and macro). Further the panelists will examine how MNEs and other international organizations could retain the benefits of global mobility, either through its continued practice or by developing alternatives to address emerging restrictions in order to maintain advantage in the face of rising global competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This symposium explores a new blueprint of knowledge synthesis in business and management. The cumulation of scientific knowledge is difficult to implement in the absence of a convergent and integrated knowledge system. The current technologies, outlets, and incentives of business and management scholarship emphasize discipline-based, reductionist research, and are relatively incapable of solving complex social problems concerning management. As an unintended consequence, the universe of data, knowledge, and communities is becoming exceedingly fragmented. This symposium gathers editors of elite review journals and elite journals with review issues, whose missions emphasize knowledge synthesis, to explore what new technologies and infrastructures are needed to accumulate fragmented knowledge scholarship into timely, widely accessible, and actionable collective wisdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proposed panel symposium aims at turning a spotlight on literature reviews. With an ever-growing body of knowledge in business, management, and organization studies, literature reviews are crucial for the development of an accumulated body of knowledge, advancing theory and guiding future research efforts. Yet little discussion about their roles, different types, and approaches exist. We aim to discuss their roles for building accumulated bodies of knowledge and advancing theory as well as various methodological approaches. We will provide scholars across AOM divisions with advice and guidance for conducting and eventually publishing rigorous and impactful literature reviews. Specifically, this symposium will address several fundamental questions related to literature reviews, including but not limited to the following: (1) What are they, and what are they not? For example, how do they differ from theoretical works and empirical studies? Which journals publish what types of review studies? (2) Why to conduct review studies? For example, (why) do we need reviews in management research? (3) When to conduct them? For example, how mature should an area of research be? (4) How to conduct them? For example, what gets published and what does not? How important are scientific criteria such as transparency, reliability, reproducibility, and how may these be demonstrated? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multinational corporations' (MNCs') very existence is closely related to taking advantage of differences in knowledge and expertise around the world in terms of both exploiting existing repositories of knowledge and combining them to create new knowledge (Kogut & Zander, 1993). While co-creating, sharing, and combining knowledge, MNCs may find that their knowledge leaks outside their firm boundaries. Alerting managers to the risk of knowledge leakage, IB literature has many examples of MNCs' alliance partners appropriating their valuable knowledge (Inkpen, 2000). Terms such as "reluctant loser" have been coined to describe the firm that loses out to its alliance partner's aggressive efforts to acquire its knowledge (Khanna, Gulati, & Nohria, 1998). In the case of international joint ventures, Hertzfeld, Link and Vonortas's (2006) study of the effectiveness of intellectual property protection mechanisms used by U.S.-based companies in the formation of research partnerships concludes that "IP protection is a fundamental consideration for all research partnership members" (p. 836). MNCs may find themselves competing with domestic firms that are able to upgrade their skills, often by hiring MNC employees and copying marketing and distribution strategies. R&D, in particular, is one of the least internationalized MNC activities because firms fear that doing so will result in a loss of control over the innovation process and knowledge leakage to competitors (Berry, 2014). In sum, knowledge leakage as an undesirable outcome for MNCs with clear distinction between good guys (holders) and bad guys (violators) is an accepted view in IB literature. This panel calls for the need to nuance this statement. Mike Peng, Shawn M Carraher, and David Ahlstrom argue that IPR concerns may be viewed as a more macro oriented special case of micro-oriented knowledge leakage. Zooming on the debate over IPR between the United States and China, they will also argue that a key to predicting the future of the IPR debate lies in a deeper understanding of the past, which can clear up misconceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on international joint ventures (IJVs) and international strategic alliances (ISAs) now represents a large and substantive body of research in the international management, strategic management and broader organizational theory literatures. However, a review of IJV and ISA papers presented during the last few AOM annual meetings reveals on the one hand the ongoing cross-divisional research interest and on the other hand the absence of a formal panel session that would shed light on past studies, theories, and achievements, and more importantly, would look ahead and discusses interesting and relevant research opportunities for the future. Starting with the question whether IJV research is mature or still nascent with regard to issues covered, methods applied, and findings the panel will offer a discussion of emerging trends and future research needs and opportunities. As authors of influential IJV studies or reviews in leading management journals the panelists are ideally suited both to provide insight and vision as to where and how to conduct research with the potential to be published in leading management journals as well as to answer questions and to discuss fresh ideas with the audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In conjunction with the 50th Anniversary of Journal of World Business, a special issue will be published in late 2015/early 2016. This issue will include contributions from some of the leading scholars - both established and emerging - in international management research. In this panel, 4 of these individuals - representing each of four areas of the special issue - will present their perspectives. As Editor-in-Chief of the journal I will introduce the panel, frame the presentations and dialogue, and comment upon the presentations and the overall direction of international management research. The focus of the panel will be on the questions "where have we been and where are we going in international management research", with each panelist responding to that question for his/her particular area of interest and expertise. The panelists will offer short presentations that track their prospective contribution to the JWB special issue, but also comment on some broader themes and currents in international management research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this conceptual study, we explore strategic governance challenges in the context of corporate sustainability - an increasingly prominent topic in management studies, further amplified by a host of corporate governance scandals that have occurred over the past decade. We distinguish between two types of sustainability crises - those characterized by intentional deceit, and those where negative societal and environmental impacts were unintended spillovers of otherwise productive entrepreneurial activities; we argue that these two types of crisis are driven by different mechanisms underlying managerial behaviour. We find that economic pressures are at the core of all crises, regardless of the visible loci of sustainability impacts. We identify a presence of a benevolent conflict among diverse stakeholder needs, and describe how (benevolent) challenges in simultaneously managing evolving and dynamic expectations of various stakeholder groups can lead to sustainability crises. Most importantly, we argue that managerial opportunism is not the only, nor the predominant, behavioural driver of sustainability breakdowns, and that a sustainability crisis may have a situational, rather than a dispositional, origin. Rather than devoting excessive attention to safeguarding against managerial opportunism to prevent crises, corporations must focus more broadly on improving the quality of strategic governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze how the frequent use of dark favors, more specifically informal payments meant to function as bribes, affects institution- based transaction costs (degree of business obstacles) for privately held entrepreneurial firms in transition economies. Prior research on this subject matter has focused almost exclusively on how widespread the practice of dark favors is in various contexts, and on the determinants of dark favors' levels. In contrast, we focus on a critical complementary issue, namely the frequency of dark favors, i.e., the regularity with which firms engage in bribing, and the performance outcomes thereof. We develop a transaction-cost-economics (TCE) based logic, augmented with insights from signaling theory, to predict the effects of frequency on dark favors' outcomes, and assess the moderating impact of two governance-related parameters, namely the status of the company as a family firm, and the presence of business network governance. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 206 companies in 17 transition economies with data covering the 2002 and 2005 periods. We find support for our prediction that a higher dark favors' frequency will negatively affect family firms because of comparatively stronger reputation impacts, as well as firms operating in business networks because of comparatively stronger information leakage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Management and Strategy fields still lack a consensus on a unifying paradigm that would explain under what exact circumstances incremental international expansion would add to a firm's performance. A few scholars (e.g., Verbeke et al., 2009) have taken so agnostic a position as to assert that contingent firm- specific factors -- such as research or advertising intensity, product diversification, size of home nation, the pattern of geographic dispersal of the MNE and the outsourcing and offshoring of pieces of the value chain (Wiersema & Bowen, 2010) - overwhelm any a priori theory or paradigm that tries to explain the multinationality (M) - performance (P) relationship. Others, however (Contractor, 2012) argue that multiple contingent or firm-specific factors should not prevent the theorist from proposing M-P paradigms together with moderating variables. The search for appropriate paradigms has been accompanied by a search for appropriate methodologies (Verbeke & Forootan, 2012) since past empirical studies have produced seemingly contradictory results (Kirca, et al., 2011). A symposium of scholars who have extensively researched the subject will debate the existence of an underlying paradigm, the search for appropriate models and methodological conundrums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]