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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.

Business history can cast light on current topics in international business. With that in mind, the author asked herself how she as a business historian might contribute an invited brief essay to a volume on international business in times of crisis. What were the relevant methods of business historians, including archival research? After discussing such methods, the author turns to a current crisis. News from India in May–June 2021 (as the author was writing this chapter) told of the devastating destruction caused by the virus, Covid-19. How, the author asked herself, was it that an Indian company, reported to be the largest producer of vaccines in the world, was unable to meet its home country’s demand in this crisis? The company is Serum Institute of India Pvt. Ltd., a multinational enterprise founded in 1966 by Indian entrepreneur Cyrus Poonawalla. Was its inability to meet India’s needs a case of failed Indian state policies, or, did the difficulty lie in failed corporate strategy? Was the answer more nuanced? Probably. What did the research methods of business historians contribute? What could be learned by following a path suggested by this international business historian? The application of a business history approach puts the Indian story in an international context. The chapter is an experiment. Ideas and questions are posed without being pursued. Background information of this business historian is added. The chapter does not give answers to the questions that arose from preliminary investigations. It pushes the reader to research more thoroughly the business history of this particular multinational enterprise and to consider the complexities in decision making as viewed from what turn out to be different home and host perspectives. Business is perceived as a separate actor, a constrained decision maker. The chapter draws on the existing fragmentary but related knowledge of this business historian and indicates possible routes for others to uncover answers to the many unanswered questions generated by preliminary investigations. The answers (to be provided by others) will hopefully generate informed policy making.

Taking as reference a sample of around a hundred biographical materials on entrepreneurs in Mexico and Colombia, the purpose of this chapter is dual. Both to show the relevance and varied modalities that the biographical approach has enjoyed in business history research since the 1990s, and to display the intrinsic potential this modality of scholarship entails for entrepreneurship endeavors. In particular, it discusses the prospects to incorporate this body of empirical works into the large Latin American audience attending undergraduate, graduate and executive education programs in business, economic history and related fields. The chapter is organized into three sections. The first two are devoted to illustrate relevant patterns in the entrepreneurial trajectory of individuals and entrepreneurial families studied in each of the two countries under consideration. The last section identifies some conceptual issues that may impact current debates on Latin American business development as exemplified in recent business and economic history journal venues and scholarly conferences.

International business (IB) as a discipline has given limited attention to contemporary grand challenges of inequality, global warming, aging populations, endemic health crises, and de-globalization, in all of which multinationals are either central to the problem or may offer some solutions. A historical perspective makes clear the reason for this neglect. IB theory and implicit assumptions were shaped during the discipline’s formative period during the 1960s and the 1970s. This has left it excessively focused on the growth of manufacturing multinationals, and with naïve assumptions about the linear and benevolent progress of globalization. This mental toolkit is ill-equipped to understand the present. Engaging deeply with history can also enhance the contextual intelligence of IB. Academy of International Business’s founders barely questioned the positive impact of multinationals, yet historical evidence points to many negative outcomes, and to globalization driving inequality. Understanding how implicit assumptions and biases arose is the first step to re-set IB with research questions and methodologies relevant to a turbulent and de-globalized age.

Business history has long been recognized as providing an important dimension to international-business (IB) studies. Much of this historical work has focused on mapping historical growth patterns of multinational enterprises (MNEs) but there is also a growing literature on the long-term impact of MNE investment on host economies, and this paper reviews this research. The focus is primarily on developing-country host economies, and more broadly on the global distribution of wealth and poverty. The article suggests three major arguments. First, it is necessary to take a long-time horizon when assessing impact on host economies. Second, it is necessary to incorporate societal and cultural impacts alongside more traditional measures of economic impact. Third, there is weak historical evidence that MNE’s have had a substantial positive impact over the long run on the development of host developing economies. A hypothesis is suggested that, given adequate domestic growth-supporting institutions and human-capital development, developing countries achieve more sustained development from excluding foreign-owned MNEs rather than hosting them.

The purpose of this work is to consider how to best prepare current and future business students for the inevitable ethical dilemmas that they will face in the course of their professional careers. To that end, the – still under-researched – rich history of the academic study of business ethics is leveraged in order to consider how a better understanding of the history of business ethics can help prepare for the future of business ethics. In addition to the above, the inescapable central role of the individual decision maker is demonstrated, with special emphasis on what is known about contemporary students of business can inform with regard to what business ethical challenges may await them and those impacted by their decisions.

This chapter uses the intellectual journey of Geoffrey Jones as an international business scholar to suggest that crises have been the norm rather than the exception in the history of international business. Over the last 100 years world wars, regional conflicts, the Great Depression, and decolonization are among the shocks which have transformed the political economy of global business. For businesses active in emerging markets, shocks have been regular occurrences. Scholars need to address the role of crises and rare events in international business, along with the wider social implications, by employing unconventional methodologies, and making bold claims. Robust evidence on climate change and multiple geo-political tensions suggest a prolonged period going forward when global business will encounter turbulence and crisis.