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The purpose of this study is to reflect on the importance of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) framework as a milestone for concerted efforts to tackle the underlying grand challenges.

This viewpoint is predominantly conceptual in nature. However, this study adapts the University of Auckland's SDG key words to broadly map existing international business research in each SDG category across nine journals.

The SDG framework offers a positive and inclusive way forward to integrate social and environmental with economic aspects in the field of international business.

The inclusive nature of the SDG framework may achieve what previous labels such as social value creation and corporate social responsibility could not. It offers a path where integrating social and environmental with economic perspectives does not need to threaten the identity of the field. The SDG mapping exercise across nine selected journals clearly demonstrates that mainstream, economically focused research can continue to make valuable contributions to the SDGs as long as the discipline allows more room for integrators.

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) attempting to create social value in base of the pyramid (BoP) economies are encumbered by unique market and institutional barriers. To overcome these challenges, BoP scholars have advocated the strategy of using embeddedness as a replacement for inefficient formal institutions. Reliance on informal social ties for coordinating market exchange, however, leads to costly investments, exposure to opportunism and the creation of nontransferable capabilities. This paper aims to investigate these issues.

The authors argue that embeddedness should be used as an intermediate step toward developing more enduring formal institutions rather than as a replacement for them.

The authors put forward the notion of proto-institutions as a useful concept for exploring how MNEs can engage in co-designing efficient and inclusive institutional forms aimed at engendering long-term social value creation.

The authors identify three institutional fields wherein MNEs can leverage social embeddedness to develop proto-institutions that are potentially transferable to become formal institutions. First, MNEs can build governance institutions that can enhance coordination among local actors. Second, MNEs can experiment with small-scale change and adaptation of market institutions that reduce transaction costs and facilitate market exchanges. For example, improved institutional practices in value chain governance can boost business performance while also improving the livelihoods of supply chain partners. Finally, the authors discuss the potential for developing favorable socio-cultural institutions by introducing new principles of organizing or educational practices.

This paper presents a framework for an improved understanding of actual internationalization motives. Answers to a key question in IB studies – why companies internationalize – contain considerable flaws. There are theoretical, disciplinary and methodological reasons for this state of affairs. In practice, the lacking attention for motivational constellations has serious repercussions for the theoretical sophistication of IB studies, lowering its managerial relevance.

Managers are confronted with many internationalization considerations simultaneously and, therefore, often have difficulty in recognizing themselves in extant approaches. The abstractions that many textbooks and academic papers present on the why question of corporate internationalization defy reality in case the various motivational trade-offs that managers face are not adequately addressed. This contribution presents a framework that is based on the identification of a number of motivational tensions that define the outcome of the actual internationalization strategies of companies: between intrinsic and extrinsic motives, between strategic intent and realization and between tactical and strategic considerations.

Dealing with these tensions at the same time provides a strong ground for explaining particular outcomes of the internationalization process in degrees of international coordination and integration.

The practical implication of the approach is a new conceptual framework that help scholars and managers understand complex configurations of internationalization motives better and thus come up with more realistic descriptions of what has actually influenced companies to adopt a particular internationalization strategy.

The paper presents a completely new combination of models to document the motivations and consequently the internationalization trajectories of companies. It is, however, also well founded in the literature, but it presents a fundamental account of some serious flaws in IB theory and practice.

This paper aims to understand the role resources-for-infrastructure (R4I) swaps play in internationalisation strategies, thereby contributing to a modern theory of the multinational enterprises (MNEs) based on experiences of rising power firms. Since 2004, the Chinese Government; state-owned policy banks; and oil, mining and construction corporations have used a relatively unique form of internationalisation through complex, large-scale R4I swaps in Africa.

This paper uses a resource bundling perspective and political economy lens to analyse complex entry decisions and success, as well as the failure of R4I swaps. The paper is based on a comparative analysis of published case studies of R4I swaps in seven African countries complemented by field research by the first author.

The findings show that, under very specific circumstances, R4I swaps can be considered as a successful internationalisation strategy. R4I swaps enable Chinese MNEs to build and maintain relationships with non-market elites that control access to natural resources and infrastructure contracts.

The sample of cases, although representing all relevant R4I-swaps, is too small to come for more quantitative conclusions on success/failure factors.

R4I swaps are a very unlikely model for Western MNEs, as they lack the necessary country-specific competitive advantages and institutional mechanisms.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first comprehensive study of all relevant Chinese R4I swaps in Africa and contains original data from fieldwork in Ghana and D.R. Congo.

The purpose of this study is to examine the existence of greenwashing and sustainable development goal (SDG)-washing processes by comparing ex ante (SDG Compass) and ex post (SDG Compliance) indicators and investigating whether the limitations associated with these indicators encourage companies to engage in washing processes.

The authors use a sample of 1,154 companies included in the S&P Sustainability Yearbook (formerly the RobecoSAM Yearbook). The authors test for the presence of greenwashing by comparing ex ante and ex post indicators for each SDG, whereas to test for SDG-washing, the authors compare the two ex ante and ex post approaches considering the full set of SDGs.

The results show that there is no consistency between the two types of indicators to measure the level of SDG implementation in organisations. This lack of consistency may facilitate both greenwashing and SDG-washing processes, which is due to the design and limitations of these measurement tools.

Companies may choose those indicators that paint their commitment to the SDGs in the best light, but they may also select indicators based on the SDGs they want to report on. These two options would combine greenwashing and SDG-washing.

The shift towards improved standards and regulations for measuring SDG achievement is the result of several social factors such as investor scrutiny, regulatory reform, consumer awareness and increased corporate accountability.

Few previous studies have analysed in detail the interaction between greenwashing and SDG-washing. They focus on the use of ex ante or ex post indicators separately, with samples composed of local companies, and without considering the whole set of SDGs.

This paper aims to use the eclectic paradigm as a broad organizing framework to bring together two somewhat parallel international business (IB) literatures, one on the development effects of multinational enterprise activity and the other on the internationalization of emerging market multinationals (EMNEs). The author does so to better understand how outward foreign investment shapes economic development in firms’ home countries.

Considering that the characteristics of foreign investment by EMNEs likely differ from that of their developed economy counterparts and that such characteristics may have unique development consequences, the author revisits one of IB’s overarching theories to rethink how ownership, location and internalization advantages take shape and stimulate diverse development outcomes.

My narrative review and conceptual analysis indicate that the eclectic paradigm is a valuable framework that can be used to shed light on underexplored phenomena and thereby inform important policy debates. The analysis suggests that unique characteristics of EMNE investment simultaneously have positive and negative development consequences in their home countries.

The author sets out a research agenda that revolves around six propositions that separately relate one of these three distinct characteristics of EMNE investment to two development outcomes, namely, spillovers and direct effects on home-country employment. My propositions suggest that important policy dilemmas potentially apply, in that each of the three characteristics positively affects one of the aspects of development, but negatively the other.

My research agenda presents international business scholars with new opportunities to build on a history of policymaking impact, now geared toward resolving society’s grand challenge of underdevelopment.

This paper aims to propose an integrative framework that enables the mapping of firm activities along two dimensions of responsible business behavior: a width and a depth dimension. Width includes associative, peripheral, operational and embedded responsibility. In terms of depth, we identify delinquent, neutral, nascent, enhanced and advanced levels of responsibility.

The responsibility matrix is developed by drawing on the literature and the ambition to provide a more nuanced map of a firm’s activities and its contributions toward the sustainable development goals (SDGs).

The matrix enables the classification of firm activities into different functional categories based on how they relate to a firm’s business model. Further, the meaningfulness of each activity can be identified by determining its depth.

Mapping all the relevant activities of a multinational firm onto the responsibility matrix enables managers and policymakers to identify areas where transformation is most needed. Further, multinational firms can use the matrix to map the activities of their value chain partners and design more effective standards and interventions.

The business responsibility matrix represents a diagnostic tool that enables the detailed mapping of firm capabilities and the identification of areas where further capacity building is necessary and where pockets of excellence exist.

The responsibility matrix offers a benchmarking tool for progress that can be used in conjunction with existing guidelines and initiatives such as the United Nations (UN) Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the UN Global Compact and the Global Reporting Initiative.

The responsibility matrix acknowledges that firms can engage with the SDGs through different types of activity (width dimension). Simultaneously, it recognizes that activities in the same category can have varying levels of effectiveness (depth dimension).

The purpose of the paper is to analyse the relationship between corporate social responsibility and the concept of Black economic empowerment in South Africa. The paper examines whether government interventions in the area of corporate social responsibility post‐1994 have been successful. The paper also assesses critically the level of voluntary commitment that businesses in South Africa have displayed in the area of corporate social responsibility.

Corporate social responsibility in South Africa pre‐1994 and post‐1994 is examined and compared. The Broad‐Based Black Economic Empowerment Act (2003), the new South African Companies Act (2008) and the King Codes of Corporate Governance Principles in South Africa are critiqued. A distinction is made between government and business corporate social responsibility initiatives.

The paper principally concludes that meaningful corporate social responsibility in the area of human rights can be better achieved if it is based on commitment and collaborative partnership.

The paper provides a basis for empirical research on corporate social responsibility and socio‐economic development in South Africa.

This paper adds to the growing discourse of academic literature that supports a strategic partnership‐based approach to corporate social responsibility.