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The first part of Volume 24 contains our annual feature from a leading scholar. Professor Stephen Kobrin was the recipient of the 2010 Booz & Co./strategy+business Eminent Scholar in International Management Award, given by the International Management Division of the Academy of Management, and in his acceptance speech gives us his view on the evolution of the nation state and global governance. This is a particularly salient introduction to this volume as Professor Kobrin's work very neatly addresses the question of what is the role of location when political power is now spanning traditional locational boundaries. Jonathan Doh and Ruth Aguilera provide commentaries that integrate Kobrin's work with that of stakeholder theory and transnational governance.

The first part of Volume 26 is dedicated to our annual feature from a leading scholar. The 2012 Recipient of the Booz & Co./Strategy + Business Eminent Scholar in International Management Award was Professor Jean-François Hennart of Tilburg University. Professor Hennart was honoured by this Award by the International Management Division of the Academy of Management at its annual conference in Boston, Massachusetts. His acceptance speech discusses the role of his work on transaction cost economics on international business and organizational structure. The speech is followed by the commentaries of Alain Verbeke and Jenny Hillemann of the University of Calgary and Arjen Slangen of Tilburg University.

This research examines the differential impact of the importance of internally and externally sourced information and knowledge and their relationship to absorptive capacity and firm performance. In addition, this analysis deals directly with the unobservable heterogeneity amongst firms that is generally viewed as the raison d'être for a unique resource-based perspective of organizational performance. Latent class, finite mixture regression models are used that show that a single model relating knowledge sourcing, absorptive capacity and firm performance is inadequate in explaining even a minor portion of the variation which is seen between firms.

This chapter reviews the key obstacles to understanding the effects of populism on international business (IB) by focusing on one particular and well-studied facet of IB, firm market entry strategies. While populism has already had and potentially can have future serious repercussions for macroeconomic stability, talent sourcing, and value chain integration, a much more immediate effect of the current strain of anti-globalization populism can be to alter the incentives that a multinational enterprise (MNE) faces in its internationalization approaches and in the decision on where to invest. In practical terms, populist political environments may lead to outright restrictions on some modes of entry but are more likely to incentivize firms top utilize “safer” modes of market entry, which includes outright delays in foreign investment. The constrained space that populism may offer for entry modes may also ratchet up transaction costs to a point that firms will need to re-think their internationalization – not necessarily the strategy, but the planned location for foreign direct investment. In this sense, populists may get what they want, with a reduction of foreign business, and hence foreign influence, within their borders.

Christian Geisler Asmussen is an assistant professor of strategic management and international business at the Department of Strategic Management and Globalization, Copenhagen Business School. His research revolves around globalization and the international expansion trajectories of multinational corporations (MNCs). Drawing on a background in formal economics but applying a multi-disciplinary approach to his research, he has focused in particular on the interaction between competitive advantage and geographic scope. His work has appeared in the Journal of International Business Studies, Management International Review and International Business Review. He also serves as an ad-hoc reviewer on numerous international journals including the Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal and Journal of Management Studies, and on the editorial review boards of Management International Review and Multinational Business Review. Christian received his PhD from Copenhagen Business School in 2007. In relation to his dissertation, he has been awarded the Barry M. Richman best dissertation award from the Academy of Management, the Haynes Prize for most promising scholar from the Academy of International Business, as well as several prestigious prizes from the Danish research community. He has been a visiting scholar at Indiana University, University of Victoria, Duke University and Temple University.

Laszlo Tihanyi is the B. Marie Oth Professor in Business Administration in the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University, USA. He received a PhD in Strategic Management from Indiana University and a Doctorate in Business Economics from Corvinus University of Budapest in his native Hungary. He is also an honourary Professor at Corvinus University. His main research areas are internationalization, corporate governance in multinational firms and organizational adaptation in emerging economies. His current research interests include the involvement of board of directors in foreign direct investment, the institutional environment of internationalization decisions and the effects of social movements on multinational firms. His papers have been published in the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, Journal of International Business Studies and others. He served as Associate Editor of the Journal of Management Studies. He is currently on the Editorial Boards of the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of Management Studies and Business Horizons.

Meta-analysis is one of a number of scientific approaches for accumulating knowledge in a research domain. It provides a quantitative synthesis of a literature using various statistical instruments. This chapter introduces the main points underlying meta-analytic methodology by discussing its merits when compared to a conventional literature review and covers the fundamental approaches used when conducting a meta-analysis. Criticism of meta-analysis is briefly discussed in the context of the major issues facing meta-analysis in international business.