Fowler Professors Build Framework to Promote Future International Business Research

Multinational enterprise (MNE) location decisions are central to international business (IB). Global city locations such as London, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo, and Toronto, attract a disproportionate amount of MNE investment. However, most of the research on global cities resides outside the IB domain.

A recently published paper in the Journal of World Business by three management professors from the Fowler College of Business at San Diego State University; along with a professor from the Smith School of Business, Queen's University provides a foundation for advancing global city research in IB.

In this paper titled "Global cities: A multi-disciplinary review and research agenda", Professors Dwarka Chakravarty, Martina Musteen, and Mujtaba Ahsan from SDSU; and Professor Anthony Goerzen from Queen's, review 181 articles in 59 journals across the domains of IB, General Business, Urban Studies, and Economic Geography.

They synthesize this diverse literature and link findings using three themes of direct relevance to IB - the characteristics of global cities, MNE strategic decisions in global cities, and outcomes of MNE investment in global cities. Using this framework, they identify research gaps and provide future IB research directions in this exciting area. (View the video abstract of their paper above).