Introduction from the Editors

Citation

Roberts, J. and Cairns, G. (2010), "Introduction from the Editors", Critical Perspectives on International Business, Vol. 6 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/cpoib.2010.29006aaa.001

Introduction from the Editors

Article Type: Editorial From: critical perspectives on international business, Volume 6, Issue 1

Welcome to the first issue of critical perspectives on international business (CPoIB) for Volume 6. Building on the success of the journal since 2005, we begin the sixth year in the life of CPoIB with renewed energy. The promotion of CPoIB at various conferences during 2009, together with feedback from conference participants, authors, readers, reviewers and Editorial Advisory Board members, has helped to consolidate the reputation of the journal as a valuable outlet for research and a source of high quality articles for scholarship and teaching. The journal’s growing number of downloads provides evidence of its developing reputation, with 14,000 article downloads in 2008 and over 18,000 downloads (excluding free downloads) in the first ten months of 2009. Moreover, the journal is now available in almost 1,200 institutions across the globe. Currently the top ten countries in terms of article downloads is, in order of significance: UK, Malaysia, Australia, USA, People’s Republic of China, India, Thailand, Ireland, South Africa and New Zealand. CPoIB’s readership is truly global in scope, as are its contributors and Editorial Team.

To build upon CPoIB’s success over the past five years, efforts to develop the journal through the expansion and international extension of the editorial team were undertaken during 2009. The aim of this expansion is to reach out into related disciplinary fields, including economic geography, political economy and law, and to extend the journal’s international scope. A call for Associate Editors produced an excellent response from a wide range of high quality applicants from across the globe. Following a challenging selection process, a team of seven Associate Editors was selected. The following Associate Editors are now in place:

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  Dr Rafael Alcadipani, Associate Professor, EAESP-FGV, Brazil.

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  Dr Christoph Dörrenbächer, currently Assistant Professor, International Business and Management, Department of the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, and from April 2010, Professor of Organizational Design and Behaviour in International Business, at the Berlin School of Economics and Law.

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  Dr James Faulconbridge, Lecturer in Economic Geography, Lancaster University, UK.

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  Dr Alice de Jonge, Senior Lecturer in Law at the Department of Business Law and Taxation, Monash University, Australia.

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  Professor Snejina Michailova, Professor of International Business, Department of Management and International Business, The University of Auckland Business School, New Zealand.

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  Dr Jonathan Murphy, Lecturer in International Management and Organizational Analysis, Cardiff Business School, University of Cardiff, Wales, UK.

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  Dr Mo Yamin, Reader in International Business, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK, (previously a member of the journal’s Editorial Advisory Board).

In addition, the following have joined the editorial team as members of the Editorial Advisory Board:

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  Dr Neil Carr, Associate Professor in Tourism at the University of Otago, New Zealand.

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  Professor David Cooper, Professor of Accountancy at the University of Alberta School of Business, Canada.

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  Dr Martin Hess, Lecturer in the School of Environment and Development at the University of Manchester, UK.

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  Dr Arvind K. Jain, Associate Professor of International Finance and Business, Department of Finance, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.

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  Professor Glenn Morgan, Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Warwick Business School, The University of Warwick, UK.

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  Dr Hugo Radice, Life Fellow, Politics and International Studies (POLIS), University of Leeds, UK.

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  Professor Ian M. Taplin, Professor of Sociology and International Studies, Wake Forest University, USA, and, Visiting Research Professor at Bordeaux École de Management, France.

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  Professor Hugh Willmott, Research Professor in Organisational Studies, Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Wales, UK.

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  Loong Wong, Senior Lecturer in Management, Faculty of Business and Government, University of Canberra, Australia.

We would like to take this opportunity to welcome the new Associate Editors and Editorial Advisory Board members to CPoIB’s Editorial Team. We look forward to their contributions to the journal’s development over the coming years.

These new members join the existing Editorial Team made up of 2 Co-Editors, Dr Joanne Roberts and Professor George Cairns, a Book Review Editor, Dr Martyna Sliwa, our Publisher Dr Martyn Lawrence and Assistant Publisher Jessica Davis, and Editorial Advisory Board members: Dr John Armitage, Professor Kwaku Atuahene-Gima, Professor Bobby Banerjee, Dr Adrian Carr, Professor Sylvia Chant, Professor Lorraine Eden, Professor Bent Flyvberg, Professor Philip Graham, Professor Christopher Grey, Professor Margaret Grieco, Professor Heather Hopfl, Professor Grazia Ietto-Gillies, Dr Miguel Imas, Professor Douglas Kellner, Professor Richard Le Heron, Professor Hugo Letiche, Professor David Levy, Professor Stephen Linstead, Professor Miguel Martínez Lucio, Professor Robert McChesney, Professor Brendan McSweeney, Assistant Professor Ali Mir, Assistant Professor Raza Mir, Professor Martin Parker, Professor Nigel Thrift, Dr Robert Ian Westwood, Professor Henry Wai-Chung Yeung.

Together we are working to develop the reputation of CPoIB as the premier international journal for high quality research that adopts a critical perspective on matters related to international business. We believe that the Editorial Team currently in place provides a strong foundation from which to build on the success of CPoIB in the years ahead.

Turning to the current issue, we are pleased to present another exciting collection of articles and reviews considering a range of issues, from learning in multinational enterprises and the challenges of translation to the global financial crisis and the international business of child adoption. This issue, with contributions from authors in Australia, Europe and North America reflects our continued commitment to producing a truly international journal.

In the first research article entitled, “Learning in multinational enterprises as the socially embedded translation of practices”, Florian Becker-Ritterspach, Ayse Saka-Helmhout and Jasper J. Hotho draw on Scandinavian institutionalism, social learning perspectives, and comparative institutionalism to explore the transformational nature and the social constitution of learning in Multinational Enterprises. Through a comparative case study of two subsidiaries that received similar practices from headquarters the authors show that learning outcomes differed based on the varying extent to which practices were translated. According to the authors translation depends on the participation of local actors and different participation patterns, in turn, are rooted in differences in the institutional context of the two subsidiaries. The findings of this research highlight the importance of involving employees in the translation of new practices.

Issues of translation are also present in the second research article entitled “Lost in translation? Culture, language and the role of the translator in international business” by John Blenkinsopp and Maryam Shademan Pajouh. This paper contributes to the literature on language in international business by focusing on “untranslatable” words and concepts, and in particular the Farsi word tarouf. Blenkinsopp and Pajouh find that the commonest strategy adopted by linguists with respect to the term tarouf was avoidance, stemming from their concern to maintain their professional standing with clients. A finding, which according to Blenkinsopp and Pajouh, reflects an emerging emphasis on the importance of context and relationships for understanding inter-cultural communication. The study highlights the crucial role of the translator in international business, and draws attention to the potential for cross-cultural communication problems arising from mutual lack of awareness of culturally-salient but inherently untranslatable words or phrases.

One of the first academic publications to provide critical analysis of the current economic troubles was CPoIB’s special issue “Reflections on a Global Financial Crisis” published in 2009. This special issue has been very well received in academia and beyond. The debates about the current crisis are continued within the pages of this issue through “A Response to ‘Reflections on a Global Financial Crisis’”, a review essay, in which Robert Hudson and Sara Maioli place the main themes and debates captured in the special issue in the context of subsequent events. They also consider what conclusions can be drawn for future policy, for the conduct of future academic research and for the teaching of management and finance. Hudson and Maioli find that while the neoclassical approach to finance has evidently failed there is currently little consensus on how to replace it. This opens up the possibility of debate, new avenues for research and ultimately radical change. The authors argue that capitalism works well only when it is adequately regulated and when there is a solid mechanism of balancing and counterbalancing of powers among the major players. They go on to call for a “democratisation” of capitalism, to stop the trend of growing global inequality and reverse the existent plutocratic capitalism.

In addition, to Hudson and Maioli’s contribution to the continued debates on the global financial crisis we are pleased to include in this issue a review of Gillian Tett’s book Fool’s Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets and Unleashed a Catastrophe, by Arvind K. Jain – a new member of the journal’s Editorial Advisory Board. Jain provides an overview of this important book that gives an anthropologists’ insight into the culture of banking and helps us to understand how supposedly very intelligent people in the private banks and the regulatory agencies can engage in behaviours that have disastrous consequences for large sections of the population and for the financial system as a whole.

In Fly Away Children, the final contribution to this issue, George Cairns provides a review of the Australian ABC News’s Foreign Correspondent program broadcast on 15 September 2009. The program gives an account of what has become a multi-million dollar annual trade in children. As Cairns notes, the story of North Americans adopting children from Ethiopia “illustrates an example of how developed world organisations and individuals work together to turn the children of less-developed countries into, at best, “tradable commodities” and, at worst, “fashion accessories” for the reasonably rich, if not so famous”. Importantly, this review alerts us to an important, though often overlooked, dark side of international business.

We hope that you will enjoy reading this issue of CPoIB, that it will stimulate further critical debate concerning issues of relevance to international business and, importantly, that it will inspire further responses in the academic community, in the classroom and in the wider context of global society. As always, we encourage readers to participate in ongoing discussions and to raise new issues through contributions to the journal. We welcome academic paper submission, viewpoint pieces, reviews and review essays as well as suggestions and proposals for special issues.

Joanne Roberts, George Cairns