Trading on social responsibility

Two of the leading lights in the academic world of international management recently revealed their inner thoughts on a wide range of economics, business and social issues in the European Journal of International Management from Inderscience Publishers.

Professor John Dunning, the doyen of international business studies, and Professor Nancy Adler, perhaps the world's most well-known female professor of international management, both contributed to this prominent journal with informative and personal papers.

Professor John Dunning, who is Emeritus Professor of International Business at the University of Reading, UK, explains how international business studies are at a watershed of its evolution in his new paper entitled "A new Zeitgeist for international business activity and scholarship". There have been so many changes in the physical and human environments that are fashioning the global activities of multinational enterprises, explains Dunning, that those working in this field must change their approach, if they are to keep pace and understand and explain the increasingly important role of institutions in determining how multinationals operate.

Dunning is an acknowledged pioneer in international business studies. He researches into the economics of foreign direct investment and the multinational enterprise and has had an amazingly productive career -- he has authored, co-authored and edited 35 books on international business as well as industrial and regional economics. Dunning is perhaps best known for his eclectic theory or paradigm, which can be summarised by the acronym OLI, representing the interlinked advantages of ownership, location and internationalisation.

He has also been Professor of International Business at Rutgers University, USA, and had been Visiting Professor at several universities in Asia, Europe, and North America. In addition, Dunning has served as an adviser to several leading international bodies, including the International Labor Organization (ILO), based in Geneva, Switzerland and UNCTAD, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. Dunning has also advised several governments on trade policy issues and received numerous academic awards from all over the world.

"The EJIM is honoured to have published a paper by Professor Dunning in one of its latest issues (Vol. 1, No. 4)," says Editor Vlad Vaiman of the FH Joanneum University of Applied Sciences in Graz, Austria, "Dunning conveys a masterly tour d’horizon of the constraints facing the development of international business studies and future directions for its revitalisation."

Professor Nancy Adler of McGill University, Canada, is also a recipient of many awards and accolades for her scholarly contributions to knowledge in three fields: global leadership, cross-cultural management and women as global leaders and managers. She has received high commendations for her outstanding and inspirational teaching. At McGill, where she is Professor of International Management, she is the only person ever to have received the university’s Distinguished Teaching Award on two occasions.

In her paper, entitled "I am my mother's daughter: early developmental influences on leadership" Professor Adler presents a unique case history to elucidate the cultural, historic, and societal forces that influence how one becomes as a leader and a human being. Such insightful work has meant that Adler's international recognition is not confined to academia. She has also won a 3M National Teaching Fellowship, whilst consulting to major corporations and governments concerning projects in Asia, Europe, North and South America, and the Middle East.

Professor Adler is almost certainly best known for her book International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior, first published in 1986 and most recently reissued in 2007, in which she discusses the behaviour of managers, employees, and organizations from a global perspective. Professor Adler has long been a champion of women in international management, not only writing books and scholarly articles on this topic, but also running seminars at McGill that have attracted participants from North and South America as well as Europe.

Adler's paper joins a distinguished roster of writing from internationally celebrated management scholars including John Dunning, Geert Hofstede, Ikujiro Nonaka, and Cary Cooper. "The EJIM is privileged to publish this very personal contribution about her family history during the Nazi era and the impact this had on her as a future renowned scholar," says Vaiman.

Source: Inderscience Publishers

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