A career in the early limbo of international business: policy, research and education

Colleagues have characterized my place in the early days of international business (IB) studies and my later contributions as ‘in limbo’, ‘at the interfaces’, ‘a synthesis’, ‘focusing on linkages’ and ‘iconoclastic’. The ‘limbo’ placed me outside the usual functional disciplines in business schools, which in the 1950s seldom included ‘international business’. The ‘interfaces’ and ‘linkages’ of IB were focused on the interdependence of politics, government and business; the ‘synthesis’ was an effort to see IB as a ‘whole’ involving many cultural, social, economic and public elements; while ‘iconoclastic’ reflected an effort to break through restrictive models used in the academic mainstream and to embrace as many facets of IB and foreign economic policy as were relevant to such issues as the growing significance of foreign direct investment in international economic integration, the increasing importance of technology transfers, and the emergence of transnational corporations and of a global economy – all of which were concerns of host and home governments, leading to a focus on IB and governments. Journal of International Business Studies (2006) 37, 432–444. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400201