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All knowledge claims are also to some extent legitimacy claims. No theory can receive serious attention, let alone gain credence, unless it is also seen as legitimate. Philosophers of science have spent decades trying to frame criteria that determine the legitimacy of theories, only to agree to disagree on the matter. Sociologists of science, on the other hand, take a broader view, arguing that rather than seeking ex ante criteria of knowledge it is best to examine how researchers legitimate knowledge in practice.

Purpose — We investigate the contribution of international business as a distinct academic area whose domain spans comparative and cross-border environments and institutions and the business behaviour of their major players.

Methodology/approach — We investigate knowledge flows into and from international business, using cross-citations between the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS) and leading management journals over a 13-year period.

Findings — We find JIBS to be a net importer, especially of strategy; however, in the most recent period, the journal has become a net knowledge exporter. Despite the improvement over time in JIBS' network position, international research published in JIBS appears to have less impact on management knowledge than management outlets have on international business research.

Practical implications — Findings confirm that international business is at a crossroads and international business scholars would do well to capitalise on global presence, by expanding into areas of growth and developing integration and cross-fertilisation capabilities. Specifically, international business should build on its comparative advantages to develop theory that is useful to scholars in other areas through multidisciplinary research.

Originality/value of chapter — This study is a pioneering attempt to extensively review and conduct an aggregate analysis of all papers in a range of journals in order to identify the narratives that comprise the field of international business.

In this chapter, we examine the development of a technology path in the nanotube (NT) field – one of the most well-developed areas of nanotechnology. Although early developments suggested that there were equally viable pathways related to the development of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and others made with organic molecules and polymers, carbon-based technologies became valorized. We show how the carbon science path developed and try to unpack how it happened. We argue that it was not due to the inherent efficiency or applications of CNTs, but to sociopolitical dynamics. Even though much intellectual property research focuses on patent-level analysis, we underscore the importance of patent categories as key cognitive elements that organize the different knowledge domains within the world of NT patenting. We show that interlinkages between patent categories are crucial to the formation and development of a particular technology path. In unpacking the selection of the carbon science path, we highlight the key role played by a cadre of star scientists and the political neglect of alternative pathways as the field herded toward the CNT path.

Firms tend to transfer more knowledge in technology joint ventures compared to contractual technology agreements. Using insights from new institutional economics, this chapter explores to what extent the alliance governance association with interfirm knowledge transfer is sensitive to an evolving industry norm of collaboration connected to the logic of open innovation. The chapter examines 1,888 dyad-year observations on firms engaged in technology alliances in the U.S. information technology industry during 1980–1999. Using fixed effects linear models, it analyzes longitudinal changes in the alliance governance association with interfirm knowledge transfer, and how such changes vary in magnitude across bilateral versus multipartner alliances, and across computers, telecommunications equipment, software, and microelectronics subsectors. Increases in industry-level alliance activity during 1980–1999 improved the knowledge transfer performance of contractual technology agreements relative to more hierarchical equity joint ventures. This effect was concentrated in bilateral rather than multipartner alliances, and in the software and microelectronics rather than computers and telecommunications equipment subsectors. Therefore, an evolving industry norm of collaboration may sometimes make more arms-length governance of a technology alliance a credible substitute for equity ownership, which can reduce the costs of interfirm R&D. Overall, the chapter shows that the performance of material practices that constitute innovation ecosystems, such as interfirm technology alliances, may differ over time subject to prevailing institutional norms of open innovation. This finding generates novel implications for the literatures on alliances, open innovation, and innovation ecosystems.

This study examines the effects of organizational attention on technological search in the multibusiness firm. We argue that attentional specialization and coupling, or (respectively) attention given to problems within and across units, affect a unit’s ability to engage in distant and local search by shaping how problems are perceived and addressed. We test this theory by applying a probabilistic topic model to all Motorola patents issued from 1974 to 1997, thus identifying and measuring attention to technical problems. Our results suggest that (a) subunits with specialized attention are not myopic but instead explore broadly and (b) tight attentional coupling across units increases the breadth of search. This study contributes to attention-based views of the firm and to studies on organizational design and search.

Sustainable management requires companies to build up new knowledge to acquire the competencies needed for action. This chapter aims to deliver knowledge about sustainability and knowledge for sustainability. Firstly, we systematically analyse the sustainability literature in the social sciences through a bibliographic analysis and topic modelling using VOSviewer and Mallet software. We outline research directions, themes and critical contributions for each research cluster identified. Additionally, we categorise over 30 definitions of sustainability identified by Meuer, Koelbel, and Hoffmann (2020). Secondly, we enumerate knowledge types needed for effective sustainability transitions of organisations. We trace typologies of sustainable business models and their distinct evaluations of sustainability. In this chapter, we argue that integrating the triad of social, ecological and economic goals is central for sustainability attempts as well as long-term thinking. Therefore, our research offers a comprehensive overview of sustainability in the social sciences supporting researchers and practitioners to navigate this miscellaneous and scattered field. Accordingly, our study is precious to young scholars researching sustainability who want to use the term in an informed and meaningful way.

This chapter offers a comprehensive review the literature on authentic leadership (AL). The authors employ a bibliometric approach to identify, classify, visualise and synthesise relevant scholarly publications and the work of a core group of interdisciplinary scholars who are key contributors to the research on AL. They review 264 journal articles, adopting a clustering technique to assess the central themes of AL scholarship. They identify five distinct thematic clusters: authenticity in the context of leadership; structure of AL; social perspectives on AL; dynamism of AL; and value perceptions of AL. Velt and Sinkovics assert that these clusters will help scholars of AL to understand the dominant streams in the literature and provide a foundation for future research.

Implementing the sustainable development goals (SDGs) has proven a significant challenge for companies. While multinational enterprises (MNEs) have shown a real intention to contribute to these goals, they face major barriers in implementing the SDGs in their core business strategies. Extant academic studies on this phenomenon have primarily explored why companies “should” address the SDG agenda but have not (yet) explored what “works,” what does not “work,” and why. Therefore, evidence of a sizable gap between intention and realization is growing. Besides, there is a limited explanation for the existence of this gap and no validated implementation models that could help overcome it. Additionally, management research remains relatively fragmented. The diversity of existing theoretical and empirical frameworks makes it difficult to consolidate scientific and practical insights on “how” to guide companies to accelerate the global goals through their core operations.

This study is one of the first attempts to draw lessons from extant research on effective SDGs’ implementation strategies. For that, we upgrade the “SDG Compass,” which has been recognized as a leading framework for SDGs implementation in companies’ core activities. A critical assessment of the literature on the SDGs implementation has been conducted through a systematic literature review (SLR) and bibliometric analysis. This has helped us identify gaps in the SDG implementation practice and accumulate relevant insights supporting a more integrated and upgraded implementation framework: the SDG Compass+. This framework can advance coordinated theoretical and practical research by identifying the antecedents and critical factors of impactful SDG implementation strategies.

Studies have shown that actors who affiliate with multiple categories generally do so at their own peril. Still, category spanning is routinely observed, although it is less understood. We address this gap by a longitudinal study of category spanning among nanotube technology inventors. Our results highlight the importance of the evolving structure of category relationships, actor embeddedness within the structure, and interactions with other factors, including the attractiveness of related categories. When a category is relationally similar to others, associated inventors are more likely to engage in category spanning, whereas when a category is dissimilar, inventors are more likely to remain within it.