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Emerging themes in international business research

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Abstract

This study is motivated by two research questions: (1) Which recent contributions have been driving the research agenda in international business? (2) Which emerging themes in the literature are likely to set the stage for future work? To examine these questions, the study examined scholarly work in international business over the time period 1996–2006 in six leading international business journals (Journal of International Business Studies, Management International Review, Journal of World Business, International Marketing Review, Journal of International Marketing, and International Business Review). Next, a Delphi study of the most prolific authors in these journals over the same time period was conducted to delineate a future research agenda in international business. Addressing these two research questions provides us with a more complete understanding of the progress made to date in international business research, and provides a glimpse of the future.

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Notes

  1. The table of contents of each of the six journals was used to develop a data set of author productivity following the adjusted authorship approach employed by Inkpen and Beamish (1994).

  2. One author of the 115 most prolific scholars is deceased, thus resulting in a sample frame of 114.

  3. Of these, 112 articles (8.92%) were cited 20 times or more, accounting for 3815 citations (39.98%); 180 articles (14.34%) were cited at least 10 but less than 20 times, accounting for 2436 citations (25.53%); 200 articles (15.94%) were cited at least six but less than 10 times, accounting for 1480 citations (15.51%); and 717 articles (60.80%) were cited five times or less, accounting for 1810 citations (18.97%).

  4. We followed Werner and Brouthers's (2002) definition of international management in the classification of international business articles. An article is classified as related to international business when there is clear indication of international business content in the title, abstract, or keywords.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the three anonymous reviewers and the Editor, Arie Lewin, for valuable feedback on early versions of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marketing, The Eli Broad Graduate School of Management, Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA

    David A Griffith & Salih Tamer Cavusgil

  2. Department of Marketing & Logistics, College of Business Administration, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA

    Shichun Xu

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  1. David A Griffith
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  2. Salih Tamer Cavusgil
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Accepted by Arie Y Lewin, Editor-in-Chief, 18 June 2007. This paper has been with the authors for two revisions.

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Griffith, D., Tamer Cavusgil, S. & Xu, S. Emerging themes in international business research. J Int Bus Stud 39, 1220–1235 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400412

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