Advances In International Management

Call for Proposals

Advances and International Management, Volume 26, 2013

Timothy M Devinney, Torben Pedersen & Laszlo Tihanyi, eds.

The 2013 issue of Advances in International Management will focus on the theme

Philosophy of Science and Meta-Knowledge in International Business and Management

The field of International Business and Management has now operated as a specific discipline for approximately a half-century.  Over that period, different theoretical orientations have emerged, with some standing the test of time while others disappear forever.  Some, such as the interest in the role of government and social politics, have reappeared Lazarus-like when world events bring the topic back onto corporate and government agendas. After 50+ years of endeavor we believe it is time to take stock of whether our field has matured as a discipline. 

The 2013 volume of AIM seeks to address this issue with two related orientations. 

First, we ask the question of the degree to which our field has matured to the point of having a distinctive philosophy of (social) science.  In this first orientation we are interested in querying whether what we do as IB/IM scholars meets the precepts of science.  In asking this question we are going back to basic distinctions between inductive versus deductive investigation, the importance of falsification, the role of critical experimentation, whether there is such a thing as an IB/IM research program, whether or not we are science based on realism, and what the role of interpretation is for IB/IM scholars.  This list is most certainly limited but what we are seeking is a coherent examination of the philosophical basis of our scholarship from a scientific standpoint.

Second, we seek to provide an opportunity to look at the accumulated knowledge arising from IB/IM research.  In this second orientation we seek to build on Volume 23 of AIM, which asked what was the “Past, Present and Future of International Business and Management”.  Here we are specifically looking at meta-analytic work that helps us pull together, in a structured empirical manner, the basis of the knowledge and evidence we have been accumulating in the last 50 years.  In this we are seeking, on a scientific basis, to ask “what do we really know with any degree of precision?”

This is an initial call aimed at scholars interested in contributing to the volume. The plan is that the volume will contain approximately 10-15 papers evenly split between the two topics discussed above. Depending on the specific areas of interest chosen by those submitting proposals we may use a “point-counterpoint” format to heighten the interest and draw out the key ideas and controversies.

Our format is not to have long drawn out papers or general unfocused speculative essays but that each paper would stick to a narrow theme (e.g., why critical experiments are missing in IB, or a meta-analytic examination of liability of foreignness, etc.). The timeline is tight but we believe that having authors concentrate on a focused paper (around 20-30 pages of text) this is doable.

If you are interested in being involved in this volume, please prepare a proposal and register your interest by filling in the Proposal Submission Form given below (Do not fill in this form until you are ready to submit your proposal!).  The site requires that you fill out a form with some basic details, after which you will need to email us your 2-page abstract plus a title page with all author details (in PDF format ONLY).  Your abstract should quite clearly (using the underlined headings) state: (a) what the basic idea is, (b) what the structure of the logic of your argument will be, and (c) how you will provide the evidence to support of that argument.  The deadline for this submission is 15 July 2012.

Based on the proposals that we receive we will select a number to participate in a two-day workshop to be held in Berlin, Germany on 15-16 October (following the SMS Conference). The purpose of this workshop is to bring the manuscripts up to the state of the art, create coherence among the papers, and make sure that the papers in the final volume speak to one another as well as to the general IB/IM community.  Those asked to participate in the workshop will need to have a 10-page draft of their paper available by 20 September 2012.  Although attendance at this workshop is not mandatory it is strongly recommended that those proposals chosen attempt to have at least one author in attendance (we will be examining the possibility of broadcasting the seminars).

The deadlines for contributions to this volume are as follows:

Deadline for abstract (2 pages):                                15 July 2012
Deadline for draft manuscripts for the Berlin Workshop          20 September 2012
Workshop in Berlin:                                             Mid October 2012
Submission of full paper                                        15 December 2012

Note that as AIM is an annual volume and we seek to have it available for the 2013 summer conferences (e.g., AIB & AOM). Therefore, our deadlines are very “hard”.

We look forward to your proposals.

The Editors: Timothy Devinney, Torben Pedersen & Laszlo Tihanyi

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