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This chapter reviews the main developments in international-business (IB) research since the late 1950s. It does so in the context of: (1) the changing world economic environment and (2) advances in scholarly thinking. It then identifies five emerging characteristics of our contemporary global economy and suggests that IB researchers should pay more attention not only to the fundamental challenges now affecting our human landscape but also to the institutional environment within which IB activity is conducted.

The study of international business strategy has tended to ignore or underplay the development and exercise of political resources as well as their availability and use in political markets. This paper analyzes the political dimensions of international business as well as the international characteristics of political behavior.

The history of international business has generated a growing literature. Over the AIB's fifty years, scholars associated with AIB have contributed to this literature but it has been a far broader one. This chapter surveys a sample of the wide variety of works on the history of multinational enterprise, published from the 1950s onward. The works are not only in business history but also in diplomatic and legal history. The literature makes it clear that the multinational enterprise has a long history and is far from a post-World War II or post-1989 phenomenon. The chapter shows the variety in the accumulation of studies in business history directly related to international business as well as the forums where business historians present their findings. It considers why and how international-business history matters for international-business research.

This chapter offers a template for examining the rigor and validity ideals in international business survey research. It provides (1) observations on how research-quality checks are currently used, and (2) recommendations about prerequisites for their use. These recommendations are based on the idea that the ideal of rigor and validity is not absolute and cannot be achieved by ad-hoc checks. We argue that there must be certain linkages and progression in attempting higher quality in survey research. We propose a hierarchy of stipulations to strive for highest validity and rigor goal, which we entitle commensurability. As such, this framework outlines the different steps which need to be examined progressively to approach commensurability.

Do we make a difference? This chapter raises a series of questions that each of us must ask as scholars, teachers and consultants in the field of international business about our efficacy and potential influence in the world. In systematically asking the questions, this chapter challenges many of the implicit assumptions underlying international-business scholarship and its future.

In the 21st century First Global Civilization, there are major forces of constructive global interdependence in all regions of the world and in all civilizational domains, including, political, economic, socio-cultural and religious, ecological and outer-spacial. At the same time, there are often equal and opposite forces for destructive global interdependence in the same areas. This led me to formulate Five Scenarios for the future of the First Global Civilization ranging from a Fragile Future with high degrees of vulnerability in all civilizational domains to a set of Doomsday or Final Futures.

The world consists of diverse and distinctive economic systems. Due to the unique historical, cultural and location-specific contexts embedded in each economy, a comparison of strategic behaviors across economies is unlikely to provide a causal estimate of the influence of these contextual factors on strategy–performance relationships. In this paper, I outline three approaches to researching multinational firms that address this dilemma. They include the multilevel, historical and variance-centered perspectives, all of which can help international-business (IB) researchers develop stronger theoretical foundations from which to explain why country-specific contexts matter in designing IB action and research.

This chapter examines the internationalization of the national origin of multinational enterprise (MNEs), starting with European firms at the turn of the 20th century, US firms after World War II, Japanese firms after the 1980s, and, most recently, emerging-market firms, including those from low-income countries such as China and India. The acceleration of this trend in recent decades has been driven by changes in government policy, technology, capital markets and international social networks. As a result, MNEs are being spawned in more countries, in more industries and at earlier stages of a firm's evolution than before. These changes have also transformed the established Western MNE from raw-material-seeker and tariff-jumper to efficiency- and innovation-seeker. Therefore, going forward, the MNE must be viewed as a heterogeneous entity, distinguished by national origin, size and raison d’ệtre – from resource-seeking firms to knowledge-generating and processing firms. The chapter concludes with important questions raised by these developments for future IB research.