International Business

The newly established Discipline of International Business offers programs designed to provide students with knowledge and skills relevant to the development, strategy and management of international business organizations and the institutional context for their development, growth and operation.

Our programs and research encompass the broad domain of international business studies including: multinational & transnational business activities; strategic & managerial processes that cross national boundaries; joint ventures & strategic alliances; mergers and acquisitions; and the interactions of international business organisations with their economic, political and cultural environments.

The economic, political and social environment of international business also involves research on international risk management & crisis management for business organisations, governments and NGOs; business-government relations, including government incentives & FDI policy for attracting and managing MNEs; and country-specific studies, such as the impact of Japanese MNEs on the Asia-Pacific region, FDI in China, and the contribution of foreign firms to the development of Australia.

Success at the 2007 ANZAM Conference

Congratulations to Sid Gray, Anthony Fee and Sandra Seno-Alday who recently received awards for their papers presented at the Australia and New Zealand Academy of Management (ANZAM) Conference, held in Sydney from December 4-7, 2007. As over 300 papers were presented at the conference, these awards represent a significant achievement by the Discipline members. Details of the submissions and their respective awards are as follows:

Overall Best Paper

• Climb High, Sleep Low: The Unique Learning Environments of International Volunteer Placements
  Anthony Fee and Sid Gray
  
  This paper draws on the experiences of a sample of Australian and New Zealand volunteers from a variety of professions working in 18 countries around the world. It outlines a framework that shows how the unique characteristics of international volunteer placements can make them fertile environments for developing a range of skills and capabilities highly valued in the 21st century workplace.

Critical Management Studies Stream Award

• How Do You Find a Word That Means Globalisation? A Historical Trek Through the World's Largest Word Search
  Sandra Seno-Alday
  
  This paper reflects on the quest for the term to best capture the post-war world economic experience through a broad review of the economic and business discourse throughout the 20th century post-war history, and traces the implicit and explicit meanings attached to the term "globalisation" from its popular emergence in the 1980s. The various measures of globalisation that have been devised in the attempt to concretely capture and understand the phenomenon at the macro (i.e., the world economy and country) level are also examined. This paper argues that the definitions of globalisation have evolved (and continue to evolve, as a function of the changing world environment and the nature of globalisation itself), and that the measures have likewise evolved alongside the definitions, albeit at a much slower pace. The conclusion is that the current measures need to be re-examined and updated to more accurately reflect the current experience. These updated measures are critical to foster a deeper and more thorough understanding of the phenomenon, which will enable more informed management decision-making and policy making. Finally, implications on international business research (with the firm as the unit of analysis in globalisation studies) are explored.

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