Leadership in International Business Education and Research: Volume 8

More than forty years ago, IU helped begin the process of internationalizing business education by becoming one of the first U.S. business schools to include an IB program in its curriculum. In 1956 Columbia University led the trend, and in 1959 IU became the second to offer an IB major. The author, the first chair of the IB department at IU’s Business School, describes the development of the field in its early years.

International business programs became realities in the 1950s, but only at two universities: Columbia and Indiana. In the 1960s, more universities added IB programs and departments; the 1970s saw even more added as universities realized that IB programs would enhance their reputations, improve student knowledge and expertise, and enhance companies’ future success. In 1974, the AACSB added internationalization as a requirement for business schools, forcing even more to enhance the international dimensions of their courses, programs, and faculty. Now virtually all B-schools have become global to some extent, although major differences remain in the quantity and quality of their internationalization.

This paper highlights the evolvement of international business curricula during the 1990s, with an emphasis on occurrences at IU. Because business students are increasingly entering universities with more international experience and international learning expectations than in the past, business schools must respond with course content changes; however, not all professors feel comfortable in adding substantial international content to their courses. Business schools have responded in three organizational ways – separation, infusion, and diffusion – none of which has been without problems. During the 1990s, IU followed a combination of the first two.

Indiana University has played a major role in the internationalization of American business schools over the past thirty years or so. This report of one IU graduate’s role in the transformation begins with his doctoral student activities in the 1960s and continues with his personal involvement in faculty development program initiatives and teaching material developments. It concludes with the question of whether or not IU’s impact on business school internationalization might even be so large as to be the possible cause of a future decline in the need for a separate Academy of International Business.

This paper traces the fifty-year history of internationalization at Indiana University’s Business School. From the impact of the end of World War II, to the founding of the nation’s second IB department in the 1950s, to the School’s extensive involvement in institution-building abroad, the author examines the various institutional models the School adopted over the years to further its internationalization efforts. Finally, the paper describes the evolution of the infusion model and the range of international opportunities it offers faculty and students at IU’s Business School today.

The value of any course comes from analyzing new institutional arrangements, deepening skills, and new conceptual topics. However, whereas the international finance course contributed in all three areas ten to twenty years ago, developments in the MBA curriculum at major schools since then have reduced its value-added. By examining the four key areas of the course – the foreign exchange market, exposure management, funds management, and corporate finance – this paper argues that the topics are now better covered elsewhere, not because they are no longer important but because they have been absorbed into core finance topics, such as financial risk management.

A case can be made that, to some extent at least, the marketing discipline has not kept pace with the practice of international marketing. Recognizing that internationalization is a dynamic process that may vary across the business of marketing, the development of marketing thought, the direction of marketing education, and the marketing research process, this paper explores that premise. Then, given the current emphasis on the integration of business activities on a worldwide basis, it suggests an interdisciplinary approach, grounded in the concept of market imperfections and internalization theory, to deal with the major challenges that now confront international marketing scholars.

The changing focus of international business in academia should be viewed in the context of a rapidly changing global environment. Initially, attention centered on “infusion,” the incorporation of international subject matter into established functional disciplines. Next followed a holistic approach to managing the multinational corporation. Recently the focus has shifted to interorganizational relations involving strategic alliances and networking, various types of horizontal arrangements, in- and out-sourcing, and even international value chain systems. Frontier-edge simulation games of IB operations have moved in pace with the discipline. An example is INTOPIA, an offspring of IU and the universities of Chicago and Santiago.

The number and breadth of research articles, diversity of topics, and improved quality in international marketing research have all grown rapidly over the past 30 years. Our sample of 26 research journals shows that the number of articles increased by almost 400% between 1970 and 2001, rising from fewer than 50 in 1970 to nearly 200 in 2001, and more than doubled between 1980 and 2001. More important, the quality improved even faster, while the range and diversity of topics expanded at least tenfold. Indiana University was a principal actor in this revolution.

Fundamental changes in the global business environment as well as in the enterprise itself compel scholars to take a fresh look at the progress being made in developing knowledge. This article is an attempt to critically evaluate progress in international marketing research, with an emphasis on delineating worthy topics for future attention. Providing a compendium of research topics, the case is made for urgent research on selected themes, including the development and validation of a framework that identifies the underlying dimensions of a global company. A call is also made for formulating new international marketing metrics.

This paper reviews the theory and evidence on the effects of globalization of financial transactions on businesses. Two important benefits are identified. First, globalization reduces a company’s cost of capital. Second, globalization improves corporate governance so that manager actions are better aligned with shareholder interests. This improvement in corporate governance further contributes to a reduction in a firm’s cost of capital.

Previous studies on international competitive strategies identify a number of loosely defined strategy types and suggest that the choice among them is based on their relative productive efficiency (i.e. ability to exploit such factors as economies of scale, economies of scope, and location economies). Our analysis highlights the additional role of motivational efficiency. We propose that the proportion of available productive efficiency that is actually realized under each strategy depends on the motivational efficiency of the best possible incentive system for implementing the strategy. Our conceptual framework allows the identification of precise theoretical relationships for empirical measurement and testing.

MNEs can usefully be conceptualized as intraorganizational networks; structurally, they often resemble loosely coupled systems. With subsidiaries possessing assets, resources, and capabilities crucial to the worldwide network, management by fiat is unlikely to be effective, and an integration of headquarters/subsidiary perspectives is necessary. Yet the MNE literature is surprisingly silent on the who, what, and how of such integration. This paper introduces the notion of “orchestration” and suggests that high performance requires headquarters to effectively manage the orchestration processes of mobilizing resources, appropriating value, and ensuring global network stability. Research propositions are developed and managerial implications are discussed.

Many theorists describe organizational learning as having three stages: learning, unlearning, and innovation. Little is known, however, about the details associated with each stage, or the impact on performance. We attempt to fill this gap by reporting on a ten-year study in Hungary of the knowledge acquisition process, foreign parent contributions, and new learning capabilities. In transitional economies, firms facing the obsolescence of their socialist managerial skills must learn new approaches quickly. Private firms such as international joint ventures (IJVs) and small to medium enterprises often develop competitive advantages by learning from their foreign parents and creating new learning processes.

Existing international human resource management research tends to omit context in investigating the HR needs of MNCs, and gives little attention to the role of IHR managers in strategic decision making. Building on prior works in “context-embedded” research, this paper incorporates an MNC’s strategic context into the analysis of its HR needs and identifies four new research directions that will help advance the academic study of IHRM and its contribution to practice, particularly for firms pursuing a global or transnational strategy. The rationale and significance of each research direction are discussed, and some preliminary propositions are offered to guide future investigation.

We demonstrate that even the world’s most international multinational enterprises (MNEs) operate from home bases within each part of the “triad” of the EU, North America, and Japan. First, we develop a theoretical framework which distinguishes between the locus of MNE decision-making power and actual product characteristics. Second, we find the twenty MNEs with the highest foreign-to-total (F/T) sales ratios and their intra-regional sales, compared to the sales of the home region of each MNE. Only six actually operate across the triad; the others are bi-regional or home-triad oriented. This empirical evidence reveals that most MNEs operate on a regional/triad basis, rather than globally.

This paper identifies sweeping transformations taking place in the contemporary IB environment and discusses their impact on IB education. We focus on two overarching trends: (1) the demise of the nation-state as the relevant unit around which IB activity is organized and conducted; and (2) the demise of the stand-alone firm, with a hierarchic distribution of power and control, as the principal unit of business competition. We then discuss the range of new skills business managers will need to operate successfully in this new environment, emphasizing the need for cross-cultural awareness, entrepreneurial skills, and networking capabilities.

This paper explains, illustrates, and defends the importance of an international business (IB) policy for any government jurisdiction affected by international regionalization and globalization that is lacking in direct control of traditional international trade and investment policies. It describes efforts in Indiana that comprise much of the state’s IB policies, explains the basic foundation or rationale for such policies, defends the general case for subnational IB policy, uses Indiana as a case study of the need for such policies, and presents conclusions and recommendations for subnational policy.

This paper reviews the thirteen-year record of Open Economies Review (OER), an economics journal specializing in issues of the open economy, both at the micro and macro levels. It first examines the journal’s output – defined by number and type of articles published, location of the authors’ institutional affiliation, recurrent themes, and rejection rates – and then critically assesses the development of big themes in international economics and finance, where OER authors have made a contribution. The main conclusion is that national border represents a big constraint to the expansion of the open economy, a point not lost by OER authors.