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The relationship among foreign direct investment, multinationals, inequality and growth is a vexing one that has occupied considerable scholarly and practical attention for many decades. To date, international business scholars have not fully concerned themselves with this issue (Buckley, Doh and Benischke, 2017, for an exception). This paper aims to briefly review this literature and report some of the insights of this work. The author draws from and integrates this literature, concluding that multinationals and the foreign investment that emanate from them have a generally positive impact on growth and a generally negative impact on income and wealth equality. The author then details some of the potential contributions MNEs can make to attenuate the negative relationship of foreign direct investment (FDI) on equality, concluding that governments and their policies are the primary vehicle for addressing wealth and income inequality.

This paper is an essay.

The relationship between inequality, growth and FDI is complex. On balance, FDI contributes to growth but may exacerbate inequality under some conditions. More research needs to be conducted, and policymakers need to carefully consider these nuanced relationships.

The paper provides review of the relationship of FDI, growth and inequality.

In this viewpoint, the author critically aims to examine the papers by Sinkovics and Archie-Acheampong (2019, this issue) “The social value creation of MNEs – a literature review across multiple academic fields” and by Rygh (2019, this issue) “Social value creation by multinational enterprises: the next “big question” for international business research?” and offer an appraisal of the papers’ merits as well as thoughts for further development of research on social value creation, critical international business and work that can conceivably contribute to scholarship on global grand challenges.

The author’s approach is a reflexive review of two papers in the Critical Perspectives on International Business special issue “social value creation of MNEs.” The underpinning tenet is that by shifting the domain of international business (IB) research from an exclusive focus on the MNEs’ economic success or failure to the role and responsibility of MNEs in global communities, IB’s contributions can be strengthened.

A reorientation of the IB disciplinary focus toward global grand challenges will contribute by improving the engagement with other allied disciplines such as political science, sociology and international relations and exchanging ideas and insights with those disciplines, providing a platform to speak to not just business communities but also policy and civil society communities and bring a sophisticated knowledge base to those discussions, and connecting some of our personal interests, beliefs and values with those of our disciplinary research.

The papers covered in this special issue on social value creation underscore the diversity, plurality and richness of IB. In the early days of IB, scholars such as Hymer (1960), Vernon (1971) and others naturally position IBs and MNEs within a broader societal context and were open to exploring the various interactions and cross currents between and among business, government and civil society in the global environment. Against this background, this special issue and its papers thus widen the scope of our field again.

IB scholars may be able to broaden their contributions to include values-based and even normative judgements into their research process.

If assumptions and biases are made explicit, critical and normative issues may suitably be incorporated in IB work and thus contribute to tackling grand societal challenges.

The papers discussed in this viewpoint and the “social value creation” special issue more broadly offer contemporary contributions regarding the role and responsibilities of business in the global commons. This is of significant value for further conceptual and empirical work that is critically and societally engaged.

This study aims to analyze the short-, medium- and long-term impacts of natural-resources-seeking foreign direct investment (FDI) in the form of foreign multinational enterprise (MNE) land acquisitions on agricultural labor productivity in developing countries. The authors analyze if these land acquisitions disrupt fair and decent rural labor productivity or if the investments provide opportunities for improvement and growth. The influence of different country characteristics, such as economic development levels and governmental protection for the rural population, are acknowledged.

The study analyzes 570 land acquisitions across 90 countries between 2000 and 2015 via a generalized least squares regression. It distinguishes short- and long-term implications and the moderating role of a country’s economic development level and government effectiveness in implementing government protection.

The results suggest that natural resource-seeking FDI harms agricultural labor productivity in the short term. However, this impact turns positive in the long term as labor markets adjust to the initial disruptions that result from land acquisitions. A country’s economic development level mitigates the negative short-term impacts, indicating the possibility of finding alternative job opportunities in economically stronger countries. Government effectiveness does have no influence, presumably as the rural population in which the investment is partaking is in many developing countries, not the focus of governmental protectionism.

The findings provide interesting insights into the impact of MNEs on developing countries and particularly their rural areas that are heavily dependent on natural resources. The authors identify implications on employment opportunities in the agricultural sector in these countries, which are negative in the short term but turn positive in the long term.

Moreover, the findings also have utility for policymakers. The sale of land to foreign MNEs is not a passive process – indeed, developing country governments have an active hand in constructing purchase contracts. Local governments could organize multistakeholder partnerships between MNEs, domestic businesses and communities to promote cooperation for access to technology and innovation and capacity-building to support employment opportunities.

The authors urge MNE managers to establish new partnerships to ease transitions and mitigate the negative impacts of land acquisitions on agricultural employment opportunities in the short term. These partnerships could emphasize worker retraining and skills upgrading for MNE-owned land, developing new financing schemes and sharing of technology and market opportunities for surrounding small-holder farmers (World Bank, 2018). MNE managers could also adopt wildlife-friendly farming and agroecological intensification practices to mitigate the negative impacts on local ecosystems and biodiversity (Tscharntke et al., 2012).

The authors contribute to the debate on the positive and negative impact of FDI on developing countries, particularly considering temporality and the rural environment in which the FDI is partaking.

This study focuses on home country institutions as sources of variation in the level of foreign investment into India. Our findings support the idea that institutional voids found in India are less of a deterrent to investments from home countries with high levels of institutional development than from home countries with similar institutional voids. Overall, foreign investments in India are found to be significantly related to the strength of institutions within home countries. The levels of both approved and realized foreign direct investment (FDI) are strongly influenced by economic factors and home country regulative institutions, and weakly influenced by home country cognitive institutions. When considered separately, the cognitive institutions and regulative institutions within a given home country each significantly influence the level of approved/realized FDI into India. However, when considered jointly, only the strength of regulative institutions is predictive of FDI inflows.

This chapter complements the one that appeared as “History of the AIB Fellows: 1975–2008” in Volume 14 of this series (International Business Scholarship: AIB Fellows on the First 50 Years and Beyond, Jean J. Boddewyn, Editor). It traces what happened under the deanship of Alan Rugman (2011–2014) who took many initiatives reported here while his death in July 2014 generated trenchant, funny, and loving comments from more than half of the AIB Fellows. The lives and contributions of many other major international business scholars who passed away from 2008 to 2014 are also evoked here: Endel Kolde, Lee Nehrt, Howard Perlmutter, Stefan Robock, John Ryans, Vern Terpstra, and Daniel Van Den Bulcke.

This paper contributes to the international business lit‐erature by exploring the degree of globalization in our international business journals. Through an investigation of all multi‐authored articles in core international business journals over a five‐year period, we test the nature of international business authorship by following Rugman’s insights on the regional nature of the MNE. Our findings suggest that within the Triad regions of North America and Western Europe, and similar to MNE patterns and international commerce, international business research is not global. In contrast, within the Triad region of Developed Asia, we find that international business research is global.

Using a proprietary database of telecommunications projects in emerging markets, we investigate key location characteristics of private infrastructure projects in Latin America and Asia. We identify economic, institutional, sectoral, and cultural variables that influence project structure, and compare these environmental and structural characteristics between and within our focal regions. We find that investment projects in Latin America and Asia differ along a number of dimensions and that countries that are successful in attracting projects within regions demonstrate distinct environmental features that appear to draw that investment. We suggest that a contingency perspective is useful for understanding how different regions and countries offer advantages in some areas to compensate for liabilities in others.

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.

Moving beyond the question of whether large corporations are truly addressing sustainability, some scholars have explored the degree to which CSR activities are purely symbolic or substantive in nature. Most of the studies have focused on external stakeholder pressures. The aim of this chapter is to extend this line of inquiry by theorizing that the dynamics among internal stakeholders also shapes CSR conduct.

This theoretical contribution borrows from research on socially responsible indices, behavioral corporate governance theory in CSR and from recent research that has leveraged attribution theory to better understand reactions to corporate social irresponsibility (CSiR).

Our chapter proposes that firms adhering to substantive CSR practice are less likely to be punished by external stakeholders than otherwise. From an internal stakeholder viewpoint, it suggests there is a positive relationship between the number of board ties to reputable universities/nonprofit organizations and substantive CSR practices; and a negative relationship between managerial discretion and substantive CSR practices.

This chapter can have social applicability as it deals with stakeholders’ role in pressuring the modern organization to engage in substantive CSR.

As aforementioned, most studies explore the relationship between CSR compliance and external stakeholder pressures. In contrast, the relationship between internal stakeholder dynamics and CSR compliances is still not well understood. Hence, the incorporating of these dynamics provides theoretical insights for the CSR, sustainability, and corporate governance arenas.

Civil society, as represented by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), is exerting increasing pressure on national governments, multinational corporations, and international institutions. In this chapter we document the evolution of participation by civil society and NGOs in Western Hemisphere economic integration, focusing particularly on the NGO role in three important trade and investment agreements: the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the Free Trade Area of the Americas process. We find that NGOs are having increasing influence on the trade and investment agreements in the Hemisphere, and are poised to take on a major role in multilateral negotiations and agreements.