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80 International Business Management Research Topics

FacebookXEmailWhatsAppRedditPinterestLinkedInGreetings, ambitious scholars! If you find yourself on the exhilarating journey of seeking captivating research topics in international business Management, you’ve landed in the perfect haven. Our treasure trove of comprehensive topics awaits, tailored to fuel your academic aspirations, whether pursuing a bachelor’s, master’s, or even a doctoral degree. The dynamic landscape of international business […]

Greetings, ambitious scholars! If you find yourself on the exhilarating journey of seeking captivating research topics in international business Management, you’ve landed in the perfect haven. Our treasure trove of comprehensive topics awaits, tailored to fuel your academic aspirations, whether pursuing a bachelor’s, master’s, or even a doctoral degree.

The dynamic landscape of international business offers a tapestry of uncharted territories waiting to be explored. From dissecting the intricacies of global market expansions to unravelling the complexities of cross-cultural negotiations, each topic opens a gateway to new horizons of knowledge. Allow our curated list to be your guiding compass, steering you through the boundless opportunities for research and discovery. As you delve into these thought-provoking subjects, you’re not just unravelling research ideas but unearthing insights that could shape the global business arena. So, fellow scholars, embark on this exciting odyssey, let curiosity be your compass, and set sail into international business research together. Happy exploring!

A List Of Potential Research Topics In International Business Management:

The role of social media in international branding and marketing.
Digital transformation and global trade: opportunities and challenges in the new normal.
Tourism recovery in a post-covid world: international business implications and strategies.
Strategies for managing political and economic risks in international business.
Cross-border investment strategies in uncertain times: assessing risks and returns.
Remote work and cross-border management: navigating cultural and operational challenges.
A meta-analysis of foreign direct investment patterns and economic growth in developing countries.
The influence of cultural norms on international marketing campaigns.
International business strategies for market entry into African economies.
The role of multinational corporations in promoting corporate social responsibility globally.
International business strategies for navigating trade disputes.
Analyzing the evolution of international business models: a comparative literature review.
Global consumer behaviour: trends and implications for marketing strategies.
International investment in renewable energy: opportunities and challenges.
Emerging trends in global supply chain sustainability.
The role of trade facilitation in enhancing cross-border business activities.
International business ethics in the age of corporate social responsibility.
Cross-cultural negotiation strategies in global business deals.
Technology transfer and innovation diffusion in global business networks.
The impact of geopolitical factors on international trade and investment.
Literature review on the role of cultural intelligence in international business success.
Foreign direct investment in emerging markets: risks and rewards.
The rise of emerging market multinationals: strategies and implications.
The challenges and strategies of managing multicultural teams.
A systematic review of international market entry modes: trends, challenges, and success factors.
The role of cultural diversity in enhancing global team creativity.
Global talent management: strategies for attracting and retaining top talent.
Reviewing the effects of geopolitical factors on international trade and investment decisions.
The role of UK multinational corporations in global supply chains: strategies and contributions.
The impact of Globalization on labour practices and workers’ rights.
International marketing strategies for cultural adaptation and brand localization.
Technological innovation and competitive advantage in global markets.
Comparative analysis of international business laws and regulations.
A comprehensive review of global supply chain disruptions and resilience strategies.
International joint ventures and strategic alliances: success factors and challenges.
Digital transformation of UK retail: navigating consumer behaviour changes and e-commerce expansion.
Crisis management in the tourism industry: adapting strategies for post-pandemic recovery.
Digital transformation in international supply chain management .
The digital divide and global e-commerce accessibility.
Strategies for managing ethical dilemmas in international business.
The role of international trade in economic development.
Literature review on the impact of trade agreements on international business performance.
Reconfiguring global value chains: impacts of the pandemic on manufacturing and distribution.
Internationalization of UK fintech startups: strategies, challenges, and global market entry.
Expatriate management and cross-border talent mobility.
The role of international financial institutions in promoting economic development.
Market entry modes for international expansion: a comparative analysis.
Sustainability practices in international business post-covid: balancing health and environment.
Cross-cultural communication in virtual international business environments: lessons from the pandemic.
Globalization and cultural identity: challenges and responses.
Intellectual property protection in international business ventures.
The role of microfinance in promoting entrepreneurship in developing countries.
Corporate ethics and anti-corruption measures in international business.
Cross-border mergers and acquisitions involving UK companies: impact on business performance.
Sustainable sourcing and supply chain resilience in international business.
The role of e-government initiatives in facilitating international trade.
Brexit’s impact on UK-EU trade relations: trade barriers, opportunities, and implications for international business.
Global supply chain resilience after COVID-19: strategies for adaptation and recovery.
Cultural intelligence and its role in international business success.
Reviewing sustainability practices in international business: trends, drivers, and outcomes.
Sustainability certification and consumer perceptions in global markets.
Global e-commerce trends: consumer behaviour and cross-border online shopping.
Corporate governance practices in multinational corporations.
International retailing and omnichannel customer experience.
A systematic review of cross-cultural communication challenges in international business.
International entrepreneurship and start-up ecosystems.
The UK’s role in global energy transition: renewable energy investments and international partnerships.
Global health and safety standards in international business operations.
Cultural adaptation of human resource practices in multinational companies.
Review of digital transformation strategies in international business: lessons from global companies.
E-commerce growth and consumer behaviour shift in a post-pandemic global market.
Sustainability practices in international supply chains: trends and barriers.
Managing cross-border technology transfer and innovation.
Global outsourcing and offshoring: benefits and risks.
The impact of trade agreements on international business activities.
International business strategies for crisis management and resilience.
Sustainable business practices in the UK fashion industry: balancing ethical values and profitability.
Supply chain localization vs. Globalization: reshaping strategies after disruptions.
Impact of currency fluctuations on international business performance.
Green logistics and environmental sustainability in international supply chains.

In international business Management, our curated list of research topics awaits your exploration at every academic level. From undergraduate to doctoral studies, these topics unveil a world of potential. Dive into cross-border trade intricacies, dissect cultural communication dynamics, or analyze global supply chain shifts. This list is your compass for groundbreaking research that resonates globally. Your academic journey starts here, where possibilities are limitless, and discoveries are transformative. Begin your international business odyssey today and shape tomorrow’s global landscape. Happy researching!

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60 Exceptional International Business Topics To Score High

International business is today one of the most eyed professions in the world. As businesses continue to invest globally, it becomes necessary to explore markets in other parts of the world. But i t is not easy to write a research paper for a high grade. With that in mind, we explore global business topics to help you complete your business paper in no time.

What Is International Business?

It is an academic field that gives students an understanding of globalization in the different business management practices found worldwide. International business also prepares the students for graduate careers working abroad or in organizations engaged in business on a global scale.

How To Write International Business Topics

To outsmart your peers in such a paper, following the guidelines below in choosing a top-notch topic:

Have a topic that you have an interest in Avoiding picking narrow or broad-based topics Choose one that is based on the current affairs in the world of business Explore annual reports, periodicals, and news articles for unique topic ideas Ensure that the topic has sufficient sources

The structure of your topic will also determine whether it is viable or not. Reading previous international business topics will also give you an idea of coming up with a top-rated topic. However, we have 60 impressive ideas to jumpstart your international business paper.

Captivating International Business Topics

Why do most international companies prefer candidates with a Master’s degree?
The role of digitization in enhancing international businesses
How the coronavirus has made the international business a risky venture
Considerations when choosing to invest in developing countries
How e-commerce has made international business more accessible and manageable
Market segmentation as a factor in international business ventures

International Business Research Paper Topics For College Students

The impact of off-shore business accounts in combating corruption
How terrorism affects international businesses
The role of modern technologies in enhancing international businesses
What is the implication of the stock market exchange in international business?
How to strategically manage global business ventures in the technological age
How does cultural imperialism affect the effectiveness of the business in the international arena?

International Business Research Topics For High School Students

Discuss the impact of political upheavals in international business
Discuss the ethical dilemmas in conducting businesses globally
Why is Coca-Cola making inroads in the international world of business?
Evaluate the best HR management strategies for global businesses
Legislations and policies among countries that inhibit the performance of global companies
Does the presence of international companies on social media have an impact on their market?

Business Topics For Research Paper in Digital Marketing

The role of digital marketing in flourishing international businesses
Designing business strategies for international digital marketing
The impact of search engine optimization in increasing the online presence of international businesses
What is the effectiveness of email marketing for international businesses
The rise of site, video, and game advertising in international business marketing techniques.
The aggressiveness of paid reviews or articles and hiring influencers in digital advertising

Current Topics in International Business

How are mergers and acquisitions transforming international businesses?
Supply chain management and logistics in international companies – a case study of the risks involved
Training and development strategies in developing economies
Risks associated with global banking systems
How are regional trade blocks instrumental in international businesses?
How the World Bank and IMF are essential in facilitating international business ventures

International Business Research Papers For Master’s Students

How organizational culture is essential in innovation management
Impacts of employee turnover and measures of addressing them
How intercultural differences affect consumption patterns
How emerging small and medium business enterprises can get funding
Analysis of the Coca-Cola marketing strategy
The running of international non-governmental organizations: A case study of Red Cross

International Business Topics For Projects

Marketing strategies that have made KFC a global brand
The role of corporate leadership in international companies
How governments impact international trade
Impact of pandemics on international businesses
Effects of corruption on global business ventures
The success of Amazon as a global internet company

Hot Global Business Topics

Penetration of Chinese investors in Africa
An overview of the horticulture Industry
The rise of mask production companies
Impacts of crypto-currencies on international businesses
Who assesses the quality of products in the international markets?
The effect of BREXIT on global markets

International Business Research Topics List

Impact of war on global businesses
Economic consequences of Trump’s administration
How does artificial intelligence take part in the global market
A case analysis of companies that have succeeded and failed in the global arena
How labeling the country of origin on products affects its sales
Impacts of legislation on tobacco and marijuana globally

If you need help with research paper , our expert writers are here for you. Order your paper online now and enjoy first-class business papers. Contact us with a “ do my research paper for me ” request for quality assistance. Get the best grades with our professional writers!

International Business Dissertation Topics (28 Examples) For Research

Mark May 31, 2020 Jun 5, 2020 Business , International Business No Comments

With time, the business world has evolved, and globalisation has contributed to bringing revolutionary changes in the field of business. With the increasing internationalisation, the scope and area for research in the field of international business have increased. We have listed down some very interesting and unique international business dissertation topics to help you in […]

We have listed down some very interesting and unique international business dissertation topics to help you in choosing a workable topic. The following list of research topics on international business are developed to help students in finding the best topic for their research project.

You can also check our other business related topics posts to have further options.

Business Management Research Topics
Research Topics on Business
Business Administration Research Topics

List of International business dissertation topics

An analysis of global migrants studying the implications for international business and management.

An overview of the recent trends and future challenges in international business, cities, and competitiveness.

Exploring the international business in the information and digital age.

A systematic review of the issues of international entrepreneurship.

Exploring the competitive advantage strategies based on network analysis.

Studying the internationalisation of African firms based on opportunities, challenges and risks.

An investigation of the changing retail trends: emerging opportunities and challenges in Asian countries.

A review of protectionism, state discrimination, and international studies onset of the global financial crisis.

Examining the evolution of entrepreneurial finance in the last 10 years.

A study of the emergence of impacts of mobile commerce – an exploratory study.

Evaluation of the emergence and evolution of blue ocean strategy through the lens of management fashion theory.

Studying the impact of organisational performance on the emergence of Asian American leaders.

The importance of designing a closed-loop supply chain for improving the sustainability of global business practices.

A literature review of strategies for winning and competing in the global market.

Exploring the concepts of populism and the economics of globalisation.

An analysis of how effective leadership can contribute to facilitating change in the international business context.

Studying the influence of cross-cultural differences on international marketing.

Analysing the implications of domestic reforms and international relations on international businesses.

A review of the effects of globalisation on Asian international retailing taking the case of IKEA.

An analysis of technology trends and their impact on the internationalisation of businesses.

A study of emerging trends in global business and its implications for economies.

Identifying the five major trends that are dramatically changing work and the workplace in this era.

The emergence of corporate social responsibilities and its importance for international businesses.

An analysis of the trade challenges at the world trade organisations .

Analysing the strategic challenges of outsourcing innovation in the global market.

Studying the evolving global strategic trends.

Exploring the policy challenges from closer international trade and financial integration.

Why do businesses internationalise? – a review of factor influencing the decisions to internationalise.

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Handbook for International Management Research

A completely updated edition of the definitive guide for researchers in international management

Look Inside

Table of Contents
Front Matter

Description

Success in business today requires an understanding of the nature of globalization and its impact on managers. Now in a fully revised second edition, The Handbook for International Management Research provides a complete and up-to-date assessment of the field of international management. Part 1 provides a useful context and overview for the book. Part 2, "Designing Effective Research," will help readers develop effective, rigorous, and theory-based research designs for international management research, including qualitative research and experimental methods. Part 3, "Topical Issues in International Management Research," explores areas such as cross-cultural management, international alliances, human resources, and negotiations research. The conclusion to the volume considers where and how the field should progress. Intended primarily for those doing research in the field of international management, this book should also interest scholars and students of public institutions, sociology, and industrial psychology. Managers will find the book's comprehensive overview of international management to be invaluable. Its global perspective will appeal to readers around the world. Betty Jane Punnett is Professor of International Business, University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus. Oded Shenkar is Ford Motor Company Chair in Global Business Management, Fisher College of Business, the Ohio State University.

Betty Jane Punnett is Professor in General Management and International Business, Department of Management Studies, University of the West Indies. Oded Shenkar is Ford Motor Company Designated Chair in Global Business Management, Department of Management and Human Resources, The Ohio State University.

Research Topics & Ideas: Business

50+ Management Research Topic Ideas To Fast-Track Your Project

Finding and choosing a strong research topic is the critical first step when it comes to crafting a high-quality dissertation, thesis or research project. If you’ve landed on this post, chances are you’re looking for a business/management-related research topic , but aren’t sure where to start. Here, we’ll explore a variety of research ideas and topic thought-starters for management-related research degrees (MBAs/DBAs, etc.). These research topics span management strategy, HR, finance, operations, international business and leadership.

NB – This is just the start…

The topic ideation and evaluation process has multiple steps . In this post, we’ll kickstart the process by sharing some research topic ideas within the management domain. This is the starting point, but to develop a well-defined research topic, you’ll need to identify a clear and convincing research gap , along with a well-justified plan of action to fill that gap.

If you’re new to the oftentimes perplexing world of research, or if this is your first time undertaking a formal academic research project, be sure to check out our free dissertation mini-course. In it, we cover the process of writing a dissertation or thesis from start to end. Be sure to also sign up for our free webinar that explores how to find a high-quality research topic.

Overview: Business Research Topics

Business /management strategy
Human resources (HR) and industrial psychology
Finance and accounting
Operations management
International business
Actual business dissertations & theses

Strategy-Related Research Topics

An analysis of the impact of digital transformation on business strategy in consulting firms
The role of innovation in transportation practices for creating a competitive advantage within the agricultural sector
Exploring the effect of globalisation on strategic decision-making practices for multinational Fashion brands.
An evaluation of corporate social responsibility in shaping business strategy, a case study of power utilities in Nigeria
Analysing the relationship between corporate culture and business strategy in the new digital era, exploring the role of remote working.
Assessing the impact of sustainability practices on business strategy and performance in the motor vehicle manufacturing industry
An analysis of the effect of social media on strategic partnerships and alliances development in the insurance industry
Exploring the role of data-driven decision-making in business strategy developments following supply-chain disruptions in the agricultural sector
Developing a conceptual framework for assessing the influence of market orientation on business strategy and performance in the video game publishing industry
A review of strategic cost management best practices in the healthcare sector of Indonesia
Identification of key strategic considerations required for the effective implementation of Industry 4.0 to develop a circular economy
Reviewing how Globalisation has affected business model innovation strategies in the education sector
A comparison of merger and acquisition strategies’ effects on novel product development in the Pharmaceutical industry
An analysis of market strategy performance during recessions, a retrospective review of the luxury goods market in the US
Comparing the performance of digital stakeholder engagement strategies and their contribution towards meeting SDGs in the mining sector

Topics & Ideas: Human Resources (HR)

Exploring the impact of digital employee engagement practices on organizational performance in SMEs
The role of diversity and inclusion in the workplace
An evaluation of remote employee training and development programs efficacy in the e-commerce sector
Comparing the effect of flexible work arrangements on employee satisfaction and productivity across generational divides
Assessing the relationship between gender-focused employee empowerment programs and job satisfaction in the UAE
A review of the impact of technology and digitisation on human resource management practices in the construction industry
An analysis of the role of human resource management in talent acquisition and retention in response to globalisation and crisis, a case study of the South African power utility
The influence of leadership style on remote working employee motivation and performance in the education sector.
A comparison of performance appraisal systems for managing employee performance in the luxury retail fashion industry
An examination of the relationship between work-life balance and job satisfaction in blue-collar workplaces, A systematic review
Exploring HR personnel’s experiences managing digital workplace bullying in multinational corporations
Assessing the success of HR team integration following merger and acquisition on employee engagement and performance
Exploring HR green practices and their effects on retention of millennial talent in the fintech industry
Assessing the impact of human resources analytics in successfully navigating digital transformation within the healthcare sector
Exploring the role of HR staff in the development and maintenance of ethical business practices in fintech SMEs
An analysis of employee perceptions of current HRM practices in a fully remote IT workspace

Topics & Ideas: Finance & Accounting

An analysis of the effect of employee financial literacy on decision-making in manufacturing start-ups in Ghana
Assessing the impact of corporate green innovation on financial performance in listed companies in Estonia
Assessing the effect of corporate governance on financial performance in the mining industry in Papua New Guinea
An evaluation of financial risk management practices in the construction industry of Saudi Arabia
Exploring the role of leadership financial literacy in the transition from start-up to scale-up in the retail e-commerce industry.
A review of influential macroeconomic factors on the adoption of cryptocurrencies as legal tender
An examination of the use of financial derivatives in risk management
Exploring the impact of the cryptocurrency disruption on stock trading practices in the EU
An analysis of the relationship between corporate social responsibility and financial performance in academic publishing houses
A comparison of financial ratios performance in evaluating E-commerce startups in South Korea.
An evaluation of the role of government policies in facilitating manufacturing companies’ successful transitioning from start-up to scale-ups in Denmark
Assessing the financial value associated with industry 4.0 transitions in the Indian pharmaceutical industry
Exploring the role of effective e-leadership on financial performance in the Nigerian fintech industry
A review of digital disruptions in CRM practices and their associated financial impact on listed companies during the Covid-19 pandemic
Exploring the importance of Sharia-based business practices on SME financial performance in multicultural countries

Free Webinar: How To Find A Dissertation Research Topic

Ideas: Operations Management

An assessment of the impact of blockchain technology on operations management practices in the transport industry of Estonia
An evaluation of supply chain disruption management strategies and their impact on business performance in Lithuania
Exploring the role of lean manufacturing in the automotive industry of Malaysia and its effects on improving operational efficiency
A critical review of optimal operations management strategies in luxury goods manufacturing for ensuring supply chain resilience
Exploring the role of globalization on Supply chain diversification, a pre/post analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic
An analysis of the relationship between quality management and customer satisfaction in subscription-based business models
Assessing the cost of sustainable sourcing practices on operations management and supply chain resilience in the Cocao industry.
An examination of the adoption of behavioural predictive analytics in operations management practices, a case study of the
Italian automotive industry
Exploring the effect of operational complexity on business performance following digital transformation
An evaluation of barriers to the implementation of agile methods in project management within governmental institutions
Assessing how the relationship between operational processes and business strategy change as companies transition from start-ups to scale-ups
Exploring the relationship between operational management and innovative business models, lessons from the fintech industry
A review of best practices for operations management facilitating the transition towards a circular economy in the fast food industry
Exploring the viability of lean manufacturing practices in Vietnam’s plastics industry
Assessing engagement in cybersecurity considerations associated with operations management practices in industry 4.0 manufacturing

Research Topic Kickstarter - Need Help Finding A Research Topic?

Topics & Ideas: International Business

The impact of cultural differences in communication on international business relationships
An evaluation of the role of government import and export policies in shaping international business practices
The effect of global shipping conditions on international business strategies
An analysis of the challenges of managing multinational corporations: branch management
The influence of social media marketing on international business operations
The role of international trade agreements on business activities in developing countries
An examination of the impact of currency fluctuations on international business and cost competitiveness
The relationship between international business and sustainable development: perspectives and benefits
An evaluation of the challenges and opportunities of doing business in emerging markets such as the renewable energy industry
An analysis of the role of internationalisation via strategic alliances in international business
The impact of cross-cultural management on international business performance
The effect of political instability on international business operations: A case study of Russia
An analysis of the role of intellectual property rights in an international technology company’s business strategies
The relationship between corporate social responsibility and international business strategy: a comparative study of different industries
The impact of technology on international business in the fashion industry

Topics & Ideas: Leadership

A comparative study of the impact of different leadership styles on organizational performance
An evaluation of transformational leadership in today’s non-profit organizations
The role of emotional intelligence in effective leadership and productivity
An analysis of the relationship between leadership style and employee motivation
The influence of diversity and inclusion on leadership practices in South Africa
The impact of Artificial Intelligence technology on leadership in the digital age
An examination of the challenges of leadership in a rapidly changing business environment: examples from the finance industry
The relationship between leadership and corporate culture and job satisfaction
An evaluation of the role of transformational leadership in strategic decision-making
The use of leadership development programs in enhancing leadership effectiveness in multinational organisations
The impact of ethical leadership on organizational trust and reputation: an empirical study
An analysis of the relationship between various leadership styles and employee well-being in healthcare organizations
The role of leadership in promoting good work-life balance and job satisfaction in the age of remote work
The influence of leadership on knowledge sharing and innovation in the technology industry
An investigation of the impact of cultural intelligence on cross-cultural leadership effectiveness in global organizations

Business/Management Dissertation & Theses

While the ideas we’ve presented above are a decent starting point for finding a business-related research topic, they are fairly generic and non-specific. So, it helps to look at actual dissertations and theses to see how this all comes together.

Below, we’ve included a selection of research projects from various management-related degree programs (e.g., MBAs, DBAs, etc.) to help refine your thinking. These are actual dissertations and theses, written as part of Master’s and PhD-level programs, so they can provide some useful insight as to what a research topic looks like in practice.

Sustaining Microbreweries Beyond 5 Years (Yanez, 2022)
Perceived Stakeholder and Stockholder Views: A Comparison Among Accounting Students, Non-Accounting Business Students And Non-Business Students (Shajan, 2020)
Attitudes Toward Corporate Social Responsibility and the New Ecological Paradigm among Business Students in Southern California (Barullas, 2020)
Entrepreneurial opportunity alertness in small business: a narrative research study exploring established small business founders’ experience with opportunity alertness in an evolving economic landscape in the Southeastern United States (Hughes, 2019)
Work-Integrated Learning in Closing Skills Gap in Public Procurement: A Qualitative Phenomenological Study (Culver, 2021)
Analyzing the Drivers and Barriers to Green Business Practices for Small and Medium Enterprises in Ohio (Purwandani, 2020)
The Role of Executive Business Travel in a Virtual World (Gale, 2022)
Outsourcing Security and International Corporate Responsibility: A Critical Analysis of Private Military Companies (PMCs) and Human Rights Violations (Hawkins, 2022)
Lean-excellence business management for small and medium-sized manufacturing companies in Kurdistan region of Iraq (Mohammad, 2021)
Science Data Sharing: Applying a Disruptive Technology Platform Business Model (Edwards, 2022)
Impact of Hurricanes on Small Construction Business and Their Recovery (Sahu, 2022)

Looking at these titles, you can probably pick up that the research topics here are quite specific and narrowly-focused , compared to the generic ones presented earlier. This is an important thing to keep in mind as you develop your own research topic. That is to say, to create a top-notch research topic, you must be precise and target a specific context with specific variables of interest . In other words, you need to identify a clear, well-justified research gap.

Fast-Track Your Topic Ideation

If you’d like hands-on help to speed up your topic ideation process and ensure that you develop a rock-solid research topic, check our our Topic Kickstarter service below.

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Topic Kickstarter: Research topics in education

Great help. thanks

Hi, Your work is very educative, it has widened my knowledge. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for helping me understand how to craft a research topic. I’m pursuing a PGDE. Thank you

Effect of Leadership, computerized accounting systems, risk management and monitoring on the quality of financial Reports among listed banks

May you assist on a possible PhD topic on analyzing economic behaviours within environmental, climate and energy domains, from a gender perspective. I seek to further investigate if/to which extent policies in these domains can be deemed economically unfair from a gender perspective, and whether the effectiveness of the policies can be increased while striving for inequalities not being perpetuated.

healthy work environment and employee diversity, technological innovations and their role in management practices, cultural difference affecting advertising, honesty as a company policy, an analysis of the relationships between quality management and customer satisfaction in subscription based business model,business corruption cases. That I was selected from the above topics.

Research topic accounting

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Business Management Research Paper Topics

This page provides a comprehensive guide on business management research paper topics , designed to assist students in selecting areas that align with their interests and academic goals. The content is organized into several sections, offering an extensive list of topics divided into ten major categories, practical tips on choosing and writing on these topics, and information about iResearchNet’s customized writing services. The material aims to not only inspire and educate students but also support them in their academic journey, making the process of writing a research paper in business management more accessible and engaging. Whether you are new to the field or looking to explore new areas, this resource serves as a valuable starting point.

100 Business Management Research Paper Topics

Business management is a multifaceted field that touches various aspects of organizational functionality, leadership strategies, innovation, ethics, human resources, and much more. Here, we present a comprehensive list of business management research paper topics, categorized into ten distinct sections. These categories span the width and breadth of the field, giving students a wide range of topics to choose from.

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The Role of Transformational Leadership in Organizational Success
Ethical Leadership and Corporate Social Responsibility
Cross-Cultural Management: Leading Global Teams
Women in Leadership: Challenges and Opportunities
The Impact of Autocratic Management on Employee Satisfaction
Emotional Intelligence in Leadership
Leadership Styles and Organizational Culture
Innovations in Management Practices
The Relationship between Leadership and Motivation
Agile Leadership: Adapting to Rapid Changes in Business

Human Resources Management

Employee Retention Strategies in Competitive Markets
The Role of HR in Diversity and Inclusion
Talent Acquisition and Talent Management Strategies
The Impact of Remote Work on Human Resources Practices
Performance Appraisal Systems and Their Effectiveness
Employee Wellness Programs and Their Impact on Productivity
HR Analytics: Using Data to Drive Decision-making
Labor Relations and Conflict Resolution
Organizational Learning and Development
Ethics in Human Resources Management

Strategic Management

Competitive Advantage through Strategic Planning
SWOT Analysis and Its Role in Business Strategy
Mergers and Acquisitions: Strategies and Challenges
Corporate Governance and Business Performance
Strategic Management in Family-owned Businesses
Sustainable Business Strategies
The Role of Innovation in Strategic Management
Risk Management in Business Strategy
Strategic Alliances and Business Growth
Strategy Implementation and Organizational Change

Marketing Management

Digital Marketing Trends and Their Impact on Business
Consumer Behavior and Market Segmentation
Social Media Marketing Strategies
Brand Management and Brand Loyalty
Pricing Strategies in Competitive Markets
Content Marketing and SEO Best Practices
Relationship Marketing and Customer Retention
Viral Marketing: Methods and Outcomes
Influencer Marketing in the Age of Social Media
Ethical Considerations in Marketing

Financial Management

Financial Planning and Budgeting in Businesses
Investment Strategies for Corporate Growth
Risk Management in Financial Decision Making
The Role of Financial Technology (FinTech) in Business
Financial Ethics and Regulations
Mergers, Acquisitions, and Financial Analysis
Cash Flow Management for Small Businesses
Corporate Finance and Capital Structure
International Financial Management
Impact of Economic Fluctuations on Financial Management

Operations Management

Supply Chain Management: Strategies and Challenges
Quality Control and Total Quality Management
Lean Manufacturing and Efficiency in Operations
Operations Strategy in E-commerce
Inventory Management Techniques
Process Improvement and Operational Excellence
The Role of Information Technology in Operations Management
Sustainability in Operations
Project Management Best Practices
Outsourcing and Global Operations

Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Start-up Culture and Innovation
Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development
Innovation Management and Organizational Growth
The Entrepreneurial Mindset and Business Success
Venture Capital and Financing Start-ups
Women Entrepreneurs: Challenges and Opportunities
Franchising as a Business Model
Innovation in Product Development
Disruptive Technologies and Business Transformation
Creativity and Problem Solving in Entrepreneurship

Business Ethics and Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Stakeholder Engagement
Ethical Dilemmas in Business Decision Making
Sustainability and Business Ethics
Transparency and Accountability in Business
Ethical Leadership and Organizational Culture
Business Ethics in Global Operations
Corporate Philanthropy and Community Engagement
Environmental Ethics in Business Practices
Compliance, Regulations, and Business Ethics
Social Impact of Business: Measuring and Reporting

International Business Management

Globalization and its Impact on Business Management
Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions
International Business Strategy and Cultural Considerations
Managing Multinational Corporations
International Trade Regulations and Compliance
Emerging Markets and Business Expansion
International Marketing Strategies
Global Supply Chain Management
Foreign Direct Investment Strategies
Leadership and Management in International Business

Technology Management

The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Business Management
Cybersecurity and Business Risk Management
Technology Adoption and Organizational Transformation
E-Business and Digital Transformation
Technology Management in Healthcare
Blockchain Technology in Business Operations
Innovation in Mobile Technologies for Business
Technology in Human Resources Management
Internet of Things (IoT) and Smart Businesses
Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) in Marketing

In conclusion, this comprehensive list of business management research paper topics offers students an expansive range of subjects to explore. These topics cater to various interests and can be further customized to align with specific research goals and academic requirements. Whether focusing on leadership, innovation, ethics, or technology, the options provided enable students to dive into meaningful inquiries that contribute to our understanding of the complex and dynamic field of business management.

Business Management and the Range of Research Paper Topics

Business management is an intricate and multifaceted discipline that encompasses various aspects of the modern corporate environment. It involves planning, organizing, directing, and controlling organizational resources to achieve specific goals. This vast field offers a plethora of research paper topics that span across leadership, strategy, marketing, human resources, technology, and more. In this article, we’ll explore the core areas of business management and the wide range of research topics they offer to students and scholars.

Leadership and management form the backbone of any successful organization. They involve setting visions, defining missions, developing strategies, and guiding the organization to achieve its objectives. Research in this area can focus on transformational leadership, ethical leadership, cross-cultural management, and various leadership styles. Investigating leadership theories and their practical application can shed light on how leaders influence organizational success and employee satisfaction.

Human resources management (HRM) plays a critical role in recruiting, training, motivating, and retaining employees. Research topics within HRM may include diversity and inclusion, talent management, performance appraisal systems, and employee wellness programs. The evolving nature of remote work has also opened new avenues for research in HR practices and its impact on organizational culture.

Strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of major goals and initiatives to ensure organizational growth and sustainability. Topics like competitive advantage, mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, and risk management fall under this umbrella. Researching sustainable business strategies or innovation in strategic management can lead to valuable insights into long-term planning and decision-making.

Marketing management focuses on planning, executing, and monitoring marketing strategies. Research topics can cover digital marketing trends, consumer behavior, brand loyalty, pricing strategies, and ethical considerations in marketing. Investigating the effects of social media on marketing or exploring new methods of viral marketing can provide fresh perspectives on reaching modern audiences.

Financial management is vital for the financial health and stability of an organization. Research in this area may involve financial planning, investment strategies, risk management, financial technology, and corporate finance. Analyzing the effects of economic fluctuations or studying the role of FinTech in business can contribute to a deeper understanding of financial decisions and their consequences.

Operations management is concerned with designing, overseeing, and controlling production processes. Topics like supply chain management, quality control, lean manufacturing, and sustainability in operations are key areas of interest. Research in process improvement, project management best practices, or the role of IT in operations management can provide insights into efficiency and productivity.

Innovation and entrepreneurship are about fostering creativity, starting new ventures, and driving organizational growth. Research in this field can cover start-up culture, social entrepreneurship, venture capital, women entrepreneurs, and innovation in product development. Understanding disruptive technologies or exploring creativity in entrepreneurship can enrich the body of knowledge in business innovation.

Business ethics and social responsibility examine how organizations engage with stakeholders and the broader community. Topics include corporate social responsibility, ethical decision-making, transparency, and compliance. Research in this area can highlight the importance of ethics in global operations or explore the social impact of business practices.

International business management studies how organizations operate on a global scale. Research topics in this area may include globalization, cross-border mergers, international business strategy, and emerging markets. Investigating international marketing strategies or leadership in international business can offer unique insights into global commerce and cross-cultural interactions.

Technology management is an evolving field that integrates technology into business strategies. Research can explore artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, digital transformation, blockchain technology, and more. Investigating the role of technology in various business functions can lead to new ways of leveraging technology for growth and innovation.

Business management is a dynamic and complex field that intersects with various domains and specialties. The breadth of topics available for research reflects the multifaceted nature of the business world. Whether investigating leadership philosophies, diving into marketing strategies, exploring financial decision-making, or examining the ethical considerations of business practices, the field of business management offers a rich and varied landscape for intellectual inquiry.

For students looking to embark on a research paper, this wide array of topics provides opportunities to align academic interests with real-world applications. The continuous evolution of business practices, influenced by technological advancements, societal norms, global trends, and economic forces, ensures that business management will continue to be a fertile ground for research and exploration for years to come.

How to Choose Business Management Research Paper Topics

Choosing a topic for a research paper in business management can be a daunting task given the multifaceted nature of the field. Selecting the right topic is crucial as it lays the foundation for the entire research process. A well-chosen topic not only engages the reader but also aligns with the researcher’s interest, the study’s scope, and academic requirements. Here, we’ll explore some strategies and tips to help guide you through the process of choosing business management research paper topics that will resonate with your academic pursuits and curiosity.

Identify Your Area of Interest : Start by identifying the particular aspect of business management that intrigues you the most. Whether it’s human resources, marketing, finance, leadership, or any other area, focusing on your interest helps ensure that the research process will be engaging and rewarding.
Analyze the Relevance : Consider the relevance of the topic to current trends and issues in the business world. Researching a relevant and timely subject allows your work to contribute to contemporary discourse and can make it more appealing to readers.
Consider Academic and Practical Applications: Think about the academic significance and real-world applications of the chosen topic. It’s essential to align the topic with academic theories while also considering how it can apply to real-world business scenarios.
Evaluate the Scope: Evaluate the scope of the topic to ensure that it’s neither too broad nor too narrow. A well-defined scope helps in focusing the research, developing a coherent argument, and ensuring that the research is manageable within the given timeframe.
Check for Available Resources: Before finalizing a topic, ensure that there are enough resources and research materials available. Having access to relevant literature, data, and experts will facilitate a more thorough and credible research process.
Consult with a Mentor or Advisor: Consulting with a mentor, advisor, or faculty member can provide valuable insights and guidance in selecting the most suitable topic. They can offer expert advice based on your interests, academic requirements, and the field’s current trends.
Analyze Previous Research: Reviewing existing research in the desired field can highlight gaps in knowledge, emerging trends, and potential areas for further investigation. Analyzing previous works helps in building on existing knowledge and contributing something new to the field.
Consider Ethical Implications: It’s important to consider the ethical implications of the chosen research topic, especially if it involves human subjects, sensitive data, or controversial issues. Ensuring that the research adheres to ethical standards adds credibility to your work.
Align with Learning Objectives : Make sure that the chosen topic aligns with your course’s learning objectives and your personal academic goals. A topic that complements your academic trajectory can enhance your understanding of the field and contribute to your professional development.
Test the Topic : Before fully committing to a topic, consider writing a brief overview or outline to test if the topic resonates with your interests and if it can be explored in depth. This preliminary exercise can help in refining the topic and ensuring that it’s suitable for an extensive research paper.

Choosing the right business management research paper topic is a critical step that requires careful consideration and thoughtful planning. By following these tips, students can navigate the vast landscape of business management research and hone in on a topic that aligns with their interests, academic requirements, and the current trends in the field.

The chosen topic should not only reflect personal curiosity but also contribute to the broader understanding of business management. Engaging with mentors, analyzing existing research, considering practical applications, and evaluating the ethical and academic alignment of the topic will enable students to embark on a rewarding research journey that resonates with both academic scholars and business professionals.

How to Write a Business Management Research Paper

Writing a business management research paper involves meticulous planning, research, analysis, and composition. A well-crafted paper should reflect an in-depth understanding of business principles, theories, practices, and their application in the real world. In this section, we’ll guide you through the process of writing a compelling and insightful business management research paper, from the initial stages of planning to the final draft.

Understand the Assignment Requirements : Before you begin, carefully read and understand the assignment guidelines and requirements. Pay attention to the expected length, format, style, and deadlines. Knowing what’s expected ensures that you meet the specific criteria and avoid unnecessary revisions.
Start with a Strong Thesis Statement : Your thesis statement is the central argument or claim that you’ll be supporting throughout the paper. It should be clear, concise, and specific, guiding the reader on what to expect from your research.
Conduct Thorough Research : Invest time in conducting thorough research. Utilize academic databases, scholarly articles, textbooks, and reputable online sources. Ensure that your sources are credible, recent, and relevant to your topic.
Create a Detailed Outline : A well-structured outline helps in organizing your thoughts, arguments, and supporting evidence. Outline each section of your paper, including the introduction, methodology, analysis, conclusion, and bibliography.
Write the Introduction : The introduction sets the stage for your research, providing background information, context, and the rationale for your study. Clearly state the problem you are addressing, your research questions, and your thesis statement.
Develop the Methodology : In the methodology section, describe the research methods you used, such as surveys, interviews, or case studies. Explain why you chose these methods and how they helped you gather and analyze data.
Analyze and Discuss Your Findings : Present and analyze your findings in a logical and coherent manner. Use charts, graphs, or tables to illustrate key points. Discuss how your findings support or challenge existing theories, and provide insights into the implications for business management.
Craft a Thoughtful Conclusion : The conclusion should summarize the key findings, restate the thesis, and discuss the broader implications of your research. Highlight any limitations and suggest areas for future research.
Cite Your Sources Properly : Proper citation is essential for academic integrity. Use the required citation style (APA, MLA, Chicago/Turabian, Harvard) consistently throughout the paper. Create a comprehensive bibliography to list all the sources you’ve referenced.
Revise and Edit : Spend ample time revising and editing your paper. Check for clarity, coherence, grammatical errors, and stylistic issues. Consider seeking feedback from peers, tutors, or professional editors to ensure that your paper meets high standards.
Consider the Practical Implications : Discuss the practical implications of your findings, linking theoretical concepts with real-world business applications. Demonstrating how your research can be applied in a business context adds value to your paper.
Adhere to Ethical Standards : Ensure that your research complies with ethical standards, particularly if you’ve used human subjects or sensitive data. Obtain necessary permissions and be transparent about your research procedures.
Add an Executive Summary (if required) : An executive summary provides a concise overview of the entire paper and is particularly useful for papers intended for a business audience. It should highlight the main points, findings, and implications in a brief and accessible manner.

Writing a business management research paper requires careful planning, critical thinking, and meticulous execution. By following these tips, you can craft a paper that is coherent, insightful, and engaging.

Remember that a successful business management research paper not only adheres to academic standards but also resonates with professionals in the field. Invest time in understanding the topic, conducting robust research, articulating your arguments, and reflecting on the broader implications of your findings. With dedication, attention to detail, and a thoughtful approach, you’ll be well on your way to producing a research paper that stands out in both academic and business communities.

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research topics on international business management

TOPICS IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MANAGEMENT - 2023/4

Module code: MAN2142

Module Overview

As the Issues in International Business Management module focuses on ‘issues’ and their relevance, the content reflects contemporary themes and priorities. It is likely to include contributions from staff and/or invited speakers that are based on relevant special interests informed by research and/or professional engagement. There is a coherent theme of taking into account multiple stakeholders and differences across countries and of how to manage international businesses to deal with these challenges. The module emphasises critical consideration of the practical implications of recent studies.

Module provider

Surrey Business School

Module Leader

WORSDELL Filipe (SBS)

Number of Credits: 15

Ects credits: 7.5, framework: fheq level 5, module cap (maximum number of students): n/a, overall student workload.

Independent Learning Hours: 106

Lecture Hours: 11

Seminar Hours: 11

Guided Learning: 11

Captured Content: 11

Module Availability

Prerequisites / co-requisites, module content.

Theories of the multinational firm
Theories of internationalisation (including International New Ventures and Born Globals)
Headquarter-subsidiary relations in multinational corporations
Micro-politics in multinational corporations
Knowledge transfer and organisational learning in multinational corporations
International innovation strategies
Management of inter-organisational relations in an international context
Global stakeholder strategy
Corporate social responsibility in comparative perspective
Issues in Global Supply Chains
Institutional voids in emerging markets
Corporate strategies of international expansion
Environmental challenges and multinational corporations

Assessment pattern

Alternative assessment, assessment strategy.

Summative Assessments: Assessment 1: 40-question test (multiple choice and short answers). Duration of 1.5 hours, closed book and scheduled during the mid-stage of the module. This summative assessment will enable the evaluation of student learning for the first seven/eight weeks of the semester. It will inform on teaching progress and feedback will assist students to better understand their progress as they prepare for their written assignment. The mid-term test aims to improve student attendance and engagement by requiring their input during, as well as at the end of, the module. Assessment 2: Assignment to be submitted at the end of the semester. The assignment is designed to develop and evaluate students' critical thinking, and analytical ability to comprehend complex business decision-making in an international setting. Formative Assessment and Feedback: Students will receive formative feedback during weekly tutorials, where a variety of exercises and case studies will be presented. Students will be free to discuss and critique cases relating to weekly topics. Collectively, these exercises will prepare students for their in-class test as well as the assignment by the end of the semester. On-demand learning will also include on-line multiple-choice type formative tests along the course of the module.

Module aims

The first aim of this module is to engage students with modes of international business (IB), conducted by multi-national corporations (MNC), and observe those activities through the lens of key IB theory.
The aim of the module is also to allow students to test the robustness of established theory against actual (contemporary) events, in order to better understand the performative role of that business theory.
Lastly, the aim is to encourage students to appreciate the complexity and interrelationship between a range of influencing factors within IB.

Learning outcomes

Attributes Developed

C - Cognitive/analytical

K - Subject knowledge

T - Transferable skills

P - Professional/Practical skills

Methods of Teaching / Learning

Lectures and tutorials,
Part 1 consists of a formal lecture aimed at providing students with the knowledge of relevant theories
Part 2 consists of a tutorial aimed to be practical and interactive. Students will be encouraged to put their knowledge to practice by analysing cases related to international business. The tutorials involve active learning exercises and case studies, through which students explore connections between research and practice. SurreyLearn is used to host resources and provide a medium for further discussion.

Indicated Lecture Hours (which may also include seminars, tutorials, workshops and other contact time) are approximate and may include in-class tests where one or more of these are an assessment on the module. In-class tests are scheduled/organised separately to taught content and will be published on to student personal timetables, where they apply to taken modules, as soon as they are finalised by central administration. This will usually be after the initial publication of the teaching timetable for the relevant semester.

Reading list

https://readinglists.surrey.ac.uk Upon accessing the reading list, please search for the module using the module code: MAN2142

Other information

In order to achieve the threshold standard for the award of credits for this module, the student must meet the following criteria related to the learning outcomes.

Show evidence of a critical understanding of theory and practice in the field of contemporary international business management

Demonstrate the ability to identify and discuss practical implications of research studies

Programmes this module appears in

Please note that the information detailed within this record is accurate at the time of publishing and may be subject to change. This record contains information for the most up to date version of the programme / module for the 2023/4 academic year.

For enquiries call:

+1-469-442-0620

Business Management

10 Trending Business Management Research Topics in 2024

Home Blog Business Management 10 Trending Business Management Research Topics in 2024

Business management has become essential for staying competitive and profitable in today's fast-paced world. It encompasses understanding all aspects of business, from its structure to finance, marketing, and strategy. Pursuing a postgraduate course in business management, such as PGDM, requires writing a well-researched paper to kickstart one's career.

However, the biggest challenge lies in selecting a relevant and trending research topic. To help with this, we have compiled a list of ten business management research paper topics that are currently trending in 2024, covering advancements in technology and innovative leadership strategies. Enrolling in Business Management training courses can further enhance your skills and knowledge, enabling you to take your career to new heights. So, let's delve into these cutting-edge topics together and gain insights for career growth.

What are some Good Business Management Research Topics?

Every aspect of business, like strategy, finance, operations, and management, is essential. So, it’s hard to say that a particular area of research is more significant. Choosing the best research topic in business management within your area of interest or specialization is one way to decide what your business management research project will be about. It is also a learning process and an opportunity to showcase your in-depth knowledge.

But if you want to explore other options, write about trending issues and events in the business world, and learn something new, here’s a list of 10 research proposal topics in business management that can help you create an engaging and practical project. You can also take a CCBA training certification to learn more in-depth about business management.

Conflict Management in a Work Team

With businesses going global, team management has escalated from merely managing people to guiding, mentoring and resolving conflicts among individuals. Teams with multicultural members from different departments are fertile ground for conflicts. If you are looking for international business management research topics, conflict management in work teams is an excellent option.

This research will give you an insight into the various causes of conflict and different techniques and methods of conflict resolution within global multi-lingual and multi-cultural teams enabling you to lead teams successfully and keep disruptions minimal. Better teams translate to better productivity and, eventually, revenue. On the personal front, it means career growth, leadership roles, and higher pay scales for you.

The Role of Women in Business Management

In contemporary society, women have made notable strides in shattering patriarchal norms and embracing diverse opportunities and career paths, thereby demonstrating their strength and autonomy. While women encounter challenges in assuming leadership roles, often stemming from prevailing cultural attitudes, their presence in business management positions is more prevalent than commonly perceived. This prompts inquiry into the factors that contribute to the exceptional success of certain women in managerial positions and the unique value they bring to such roles. Exploring this subject through qualitative research could yield insightful findings regarding women's impact on business management.

Issues that Affect the Management of Business Startups

The COVID-19 pandemic drove everyone online and created a new digital startup ecosystem. However, while it may be easy to set up a digital business, sustenance, scaling, and growth are some of the challenges that follow. If you are entrepreneurial, your research title about business management should read something like “Challenges in the startup ecosystem.” Such research covers issues that affect the management of business startups. It covers the various factors that lead to success and the pitfalls and obstacles on the growth trajectory. It covers effective strategies to mitigate or work around challenges, and this is where you can get creative. Limiting your research to startups is okay, but you can also cover significant ground across other business models.

Consequences of Excessive Work in Business

Work-life balance is the buzzword in today’s business environment. If you choose to write your thesis on the impact of excessive work in business, it could well escalate to international levels as everyone talks about employee well-being, from corporates to SMEs and top management to HR.

The single most significant reason behind this is the instances of early burnout seen in the past. Secondly, globalization is another cause for concern since people are often required to work multiple shifts. Lastly, the recent trend of post-Covid layoffs that have driven the need for side hustle makes it even more necessary to keep track of how hectic business operations are.

Why You Should Start a New Business After One Fails

Failure is the steppingstone to success. Or so the saying goes. The recent outcrop of start-ups has proven this to be true. If one venture fails, do not give up. Learn from the experience and start again. Not only is that the mantra of the current generation, but it is also among the trending quantitative research topics in business management.

The main objective and outcome of this business management research topic are to explore lessons learned from failures, the advantages of starting afresh, and the strategies for overcoming the fear of failure.

Importance of Inter-organizational Leadership and Networks

This research focuses on managing global networks in leadership roles. It is among the hot favorite research topics for business management students considering how businesses are going global. If you are an aspiring global entrepreneur or leader, you would want to know more about local and global inter-organizational networks, how things work, how people communicate, etc. Researching inter-organizational leadership and networks can provide insights into businesses' challenges and opportunities when building and maintaining relationships. Managing these relationships is another challenging part of the process, and that is what you will learn through this research.

How to Manage Organizational Crisis in Business

Not only is crisis management a critical leadership skill, but today's turbulent business environment is fertile ground for an organizational crisis. Globalization, digitization, and the startup ecosystem have disrupted the environment. Barring corporates, a crisis can strike any business at any time and bailing out of that crisis is the responsibility of the business leadership. Managing an organizational crisis in business is a popular business management research paper topic, especially among MBA students, PGDM, and aspiring entrepreneurs.

Product and Service Development in a Strategic Alliance

When it comes to research paper topics related to business management, one area worth exploring is product bundling in a strategic alliance. The ICICI credit card offered to online customers of Amazon India is a classic example.

Development of such strategic products or services requires in-depth product knowledge, knowledge of finance, and of course, a strategic mindset. If you have a strategic mindset and interest in product management, this is one of your best business management research project topics.

Innovation and Network Markets as a Business Strategy

Innovation and Network marketing is an emerging and strategic business model for startups. When entrepreneurs need more resources to raise seed or venture capital for their businesses, they elect to market their products through networking. Social Media platforms like Facebook offer substantial networking opportunities. Choose this probe as your quantitative research topic for business management if you have entrepreneurial aspirations to understand every aspect of this business model and strategy in depth.

Social Enterprise and Entrepreneurship

Social enterprise is any business having a social objective and undertaking activities in the public interest. Writing a research paper on social enterprises and entrepreneurship will lead you to explore opportunities that can bring an innovative change in society and hold business potential. One thing to remember if you want to explore social enterprise and entrepreneurship as one of several business management research titles is that the organizational goal is primarily social impact rather than revenue generation. This research will make you more open to an inclusive idea of growth by bringing you closer to social causes, marginalized communities, and people thriving in them.

Business Research: Types and Methodologies

Business research, like any other research, involves the collection of data and information about your chosen topic, analysis of the information and data gathered, and exploring new possibilities in the field.

Broadly speaking, research may be of two types – Quantitative or Qualitative. Quantitative research, also called empirical research, involves the collection of data from sample groups to answer a question. Qualitative research has more to do with the impact of certain phenomena. Such research is usually an extension of previously researched topics.

The table below highlights the difference between quantitative research topics in business management and qualitative research about business management.

How to Find Business Research Topics?

This is just our list of hot and trending business research topics. To help you discover more research project topics on business management, here are some quick-follow tips:

Identify Your Interests

Start by making a list of the various aspects of business management that interest you. Rate them on a scale of 1-10, with one being the least liked and 10 being your most favorite. You can also narrow down your topic to a specific niche while seeking sample research topics in business management.

Read Academic Journals

You might want to conduct preliminary research on a few of the topics you shortlisted to see if something interesting jumps out at you. One way to do this is by reading academic journals related to your selected area of business management. Findings by earlier researchers may trigger innovative thought.

Attend Events

Attending business events like seminars, conferences, and webinars on topics of interest can help you narrow down your list of research topics related to business management. It is also an excellent way to gather knowledge about your area of interest as well as to grow your network.

Consult your supervisor or Mentor

Your thesis supervisor is a valuable resource when searching for the best research topics in business management. They can guide you about relevant research areas and help you identify potential research questions apart from guiding you on research presentation.

Use Online Resources

Many research journals online allow students access to research papers either free of cost or in exchange for a small fee. Explore this resource and sign up for a few that are relevant to your area of interest.

The world of business management is constantly evolving and finding the right business management research topic might seem like a Herculean task. But, with a little thought, planning, and some research, it is not that hard. So, the 10 topics we've explored in this blog represent some of the most significant areas of development in the field of business management today, from the rise of women as business leaders and to the importance of innovation and network markets. As we move into 2024 and beyond, it's clear that these topics will only continue to grow in importance, shaping the way we do business and interact with the world around us. By staying informed and engaged with the latest research and trends, you can position yourself as a thought leader and innovator in the world of business management.

Also, our pointers on how to discover a business management research topic will help you identify a list of research topics in business management for your thesis. You can then narrow it down to your area of talent or interest. If you still want to know more, you can enroll in our KnowledgeHut Business Management training , where you’ll learn more about the different aspects of business.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Business management is wide in scope, and there is a spectrum of research topics to choose from. The most prominent areas of business include finance, operations, procurement, marketing, and HR. Within each of these, you’ll find several macro and micro niches to explore.

An example of a business research study could be investigating the impact of social media marketing on consumer buying behavior or examining the effectiveness of a new leadership development program in a company.

The 4 types of business research include:

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Business Management Dissertation Topics

Published by Owen Ingram at January 4th, 2023 , Revised On August 15, 2023

A degree in business administration is intended for those wishing to start their own business or expand an existing one. When you choose business management as your field of study, you are not a typical student because you want to learn about all possible aspects of managing a business.

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International Development Dissertation Topics
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Business Intelligence Dissertation Topics
Business Information Technology Dissertation Topics
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Business Psychology Dissertation Topics
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Unique Business Management Dissertation Topics

Coordinating communications and teamwork among remote workers
How business attract their customers
Artificial intelligence investment and its effect on customer satisfaction
Impact of globalization on corporate management
Customer viewpoint on how they use their data when using mobile banking
Investigating the procedure for business model innovation
Evaluation of dynamic capability modelling
An investigation of managerial strategies in the hospitality sector
Important project management abilities required to implement a significant change in an organization’s workplace culture
Voice and silence’s effects on destructive leadership
Influence of store atmosphere on customers’ spontaneous buying habits
Evaluating the effect of forwarding integration on operational efficiency
The contribution of employee training and development to surviving the economic crisis
Comparative comparison of the biggest consumer trends in the United States and the United Kingdom in the automotive industry
A case study demonstrating how cutting-edge businesses like Microsoft and Google acquire a competitive edge through efficient technology management in developing nations
To demonstrate the necessity of economic and social variables for developing a viable chemical engineering industry in the UK.
Assessing the full impact of technological advances on business management techniques in America.
A case study showed how top companies such as Microsoft and Google gain a competitive advantage through effective technology management in developing countries.
Illumination of the challenges facing American companies in terms of sustainability and ethical corporate governance
Assessing the significance and value of eBay’s and Craigslist’s e-commerce industry assumptions, alliances and strategic partnership
demonstrating the need for social and economic variables in the development of a viable chemical engineering industry in the UK.
Study of SONY and Microsoft’s employee retention rates while contrasting their approaches to business management
Psychosocial risks’ effects on workplace risk control
Leadership’s function in a company’s transformative shift
Individual performance factors in SMEs
Business tactics to draw in foreign capital
Enterprise social networking platforms’ effects on knowledge management and organizational learning
How do internal marketing and employee empowerment affect organizational productivity?
Improving the sustainability of American business operations worldwide by developing a closed supply chain.

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International Reserve Management under Rollover Crises

This paper develops a framework to study the management of international reserves when a government faces the risk of a rollover crisis. In the model, it is optimal for the government to reduce its vulnerability by initially lowering debt, and then increasing both debt and reserves as it approaches a safe zone. Furthermore, we find that issuing additional debt to accumulate reserves can lead to a reduction in sovereign spreads.

We are especially grateful to Manuel Amador for numerous conversations. We also thank Alessandro Dovis, Tim Kehoe and seminar participants at the “Rethinking Sovereign Debt Sustainability and Crises” workshop at EUI, SAET, University of Florida, Rice University, and the Trade Workshop at the University of Minnesota for helpful comments. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the Federal Reserve System, or the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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4 Common Types of Team Conflict — and How to Resolve Them

Randall S. Peterson,
Priti Pradhan Shah,
Amanda J. Ferguson,
Stephen L. Jones

Advice backed by three decades of research into thousands of team conflicts around the world.

Managers spend 20% of their time on average managing team conflict. Over the past three decades, the authors have studied thousands of team conflicts around the world and have identified four common patterns of team conflict. The first occurs when conflict revolves around a single member of a team (20-25% of team conflicts). The second is when two members of a team disagree (the most common team conflict at 35%). The third is when two subgroups in a team are at odds (20-25%). The fourth is when all members of a team are disagreeing in a whole-team conflict (less than 15%). The authors suggest strategies to tailor a conflict resolution approach for each type, so that managers can address conflict as close to its origin as possible.

If you have ever managed a team or worked on one, you know that conflict within a team is as inevitable as it is distracting. Many managers avoid dealing with conflict in their team where possible, hoping reasonable people can work it out. Despite this, research shows that managers spend upwards of 20% of their time on average managing conflict.

Randall S. Peterson is the academic director of the Leadership Institute and a professor of organizational behavior at London Business School. He teaches leadership on the School’s Senior Executive and Accelerated Development Program.
PS Priti Pradhan Shah is a professor in the Department of Work and Organization at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. She teaches negotiation in the School’s Executive Education and MBA Programs.
AF Amanda J. Ferguson is an associate professor of Management at Northern Illinois University. She teaches Organizational Behavior and Leading Teams in the School’s MBA programs.
SJ Stephen L. Jones is an associate professor of Management at the University of Washington Bothell. He teaches Organizational and Strategic Management at the MBA level.

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International business research: The real challenges are data and theory

Counterpoint
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Published: 30 October 2022
Volume 53 , pages 2068–2087, ( 2022 )

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Jean-François Hennart 1 , 2 &
Dylan Sutherland 3

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We agree with Aguinis and Gabriel that, contrary to Eden and Nielsen, international business (IB) is not uniquely complex, but argue that it faces two unique challenges. First, because it deals with cross-country phenomena, IB data are less plentiful and reliable. Second, because IB uses many imported theories, and they tend to be influenced by the national environment of their authors, they often have, taken as is, limited applicability in many of the contexts IB studies. We illustrate our twin points by examining the secondary data used in IB to measure the economic activities of multinational enterprises outside their home country, both at the country level, using foreign direct investment (FDI) data from balance of payments statistics, and at the firm level, using firm-level databases such as Orbis. We document the serious shortcomings of FDI data and the problems encountered in using firm-level data. We then highlight some of the cultural biases inherent in Williamson’s version of transaction cost theory (TCT) but show how they can be overcome to arrive at a richer and more general theory that is applicable to a wider variety of contexts.

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INTRODUCTION

In a recent article in the Journal of International Business Studies, Eden and Nielsen ( 2020 : 1610) write that “complexity is the underlying cause of the unique methodological problems facing international business research.” For them, international business (IB) research is uniquely complex because of its multiplicity, multiplexity, and dynamism: IB researchers need to take into account multiple actors, engaged in multiple relationships, which unfold over time. Aguinis and Gabriel ( 2021 ) counter that organizational behavior, strategic management, and entrepreneurship deal with similar complexity. We agree with them that research in IB is not necessarily more complex than that in other disciplines. Nonetheless, we believe that it is uniquely challenging for two main reasons. First, accessing reliable data on the questions IB researchers address, for example those related to MNE activity, is difficult. Second, IB scholars study contexts which often differ from those in which the theories they borrow have been elaborated. They must therefore modify or replace them to ensure local relevance and, even more challenging, greater generalizability. We first address some of the data issues faced by IB researchers and then discuss the challenges posed by theory.

IB scholars use primary data obtained through interviews and surveys, and secondary data from national statistical offices, international organizations, industry associations, commercial data providers, and firms via their annual reports and other regulatory filings.

Primary Data

Comparing primary data across countries, as IB must, is challenging because cultural factors make international comparison of responses to interviews and surveys difficult. Cross-national data equivalence requires that respondents of different cultures, often speaking different languages, understand and score survey questions the same way. This is problematic because respondents live and work in different contexts and hence might well be expected to interpret questions differently. The frequent need for translation also opens the door to variations in the way questions are understood. In addition, respondents in different countries are likely to also score differently. Japanese survey respondents are known to cluster their answers in the center of Likert scales, perhaps because Japanese culture values harmony and discourages extreme positions. This can lead to erroneous inferences (Hult et al., 2008 ). Yet data equivalence is imperative if one is to draw solid conclusions from studies that compare results across countries. Hult et al. ( 2008 ) concluded from a review of 167 studies using cross-cultural data between 1995 and 2005 that that challenge had not been taken as seriously by IB scholars as it should have been.

Secondary Data

Secondary data are increasingly used in empirical IB research (Cerar, Nell & Reiche, 2021 ). The availability and reliability of such data poses its own challenges for IB scholars. Much of the data generated by national statistical offices has a national focus. IB phenomena are by definition international and hence at best partially covered by these data sources. Space constraints do not allow for a complete treatment here of all the problems caused by the use of secondary data in IB, so we focus instead on the measurement of just one IB construct, though undoubtedly a central one (Wilkins, 1997 ), the multinational enterprise (MNE), and more specifically, its activities outside its home country.

Measuring MNE foreign activity at the country level

Many IB research questions require data on the amount of economic activity (sales, value added, employment, investments) generated in a given host country by all the subsidiaries of MNEs based in another country. Dunning ( 1993 ), for example, attempts to determine the extent to which firms based in a given country have set up operations abroad, and where they have done it. Buckley et al. ( 2007 ) test a number of hypotheses on the factors that determine in which foreign countries Chinese firms operate. Researchers have also investigated which host-country characteristics affect their attractiveness to foreign investors (Habib & Zurawicki, 2002 ), and the effect of foreign-owned economic activity on various facets of host-country development (e.g., Kwok & Tadesse, 2006 ; Li & Liu, 2005 ).

Flows and stocks of foreign direct investment obtained from Balance of Payments statistics (hereafter FDI flow and stock data) have often, one could say predominantly, been used to measure the economic activity in a country of all the foreign subsidiaries of MNEs based in another country. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)’s yearly World Investment Report uses such data to document the level and evolution of the value of the activities of foreign firms in a host country. FDI flows and stocks have been used as dependent variables (e.g., Bruno, Campos & Estrin, 2021 ; Buckley et al., 2007 ; Mariotti & Marzano, 2021 ) as well as main independent variables (e.g., Kwok & Tadesse, 2006 ). As in the case of data equivalence in surveys on which we touched earlier, the IB literature has overlooked the serious problems inherent in using this type of data to measure the economic activities of MNE subsidiaries. 1 This is why we chose this as an example of the difficulty that IB researchers have in obtaining reliable data on the constructs they study.

FDI flow and stock data are collected by central banks to build their country’s balance of payments. FDI flows record the net value of financial transactions between two countries when the investor has control of the foreign investment (typically when it owns 10% or more of the equity of the foreign investment). FDI stocks record the value of the stake held in domestic firms by firms based in a foreign country. FDI flow and stock data are attractive as they are readily available for a large number of countries and can be downloaded for free from the websites of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Commission for Trade and Development (UNCTAD), as well as those of national statistical offices. While ease of access is clearly a plus point, there are significant limitations to their use. Three of them apply to both flow and stock measures: FDI statistics only (1) record the immediate origin and destination of the flows, not the ultimate ones (see below recent efforts to remedy this); (2) show sums directly sent by parents to their subsidiaries, not those borrowed locally; (3) measure financial flows, not the economic value created with them. Additionally, most published figures of FDI inflows and outflows are on a net basis, which makes interpretation difficult, and FDI stocks are reported using a variety of methodologies, thus hampering their comparability. Let us now look at each of these points.

Until 2014, all FDI flows and stocks were recorded on the basis of their immediate origin and destination. Recently the OECD has started to push countries to publish data on both the immediate and ultimate owners of FDI flows and stocks coming into their country. So far, however, only 19 developed countries have collected such data, and some of it has not been made public. The extensive past and current use of FDI flows and stocks measured on the basis of the immediate investor poses a number of problems. First, it often leads to misclassifying the owner of the investment. For example, when in 1998 General Motors set up an auto assembly plant in Poland, the National Bank of Poland classified it in its FDI statistics as a German investment into Poland because the immediate investor was Opel, General Motors’ wholly-owned German subsidiary, even though the ultimate one was its US parent, General Motors. Likewise Deutsche Telekom invested in Macedonia through its majority-owned subsidiary Magyar Telekom so the investment was registered as a Hungarian one into Macedonia (Kalotay, 2012 ). Such “indirect investments” have been estimated to make up around 30% of global FDI flows (Aykut, Sanghi & Kosmidou, 2017 ). In the cases shown above, the ultimate owner is relatively easy to uncover, but this is not always the case. UNCTAD ( 2016 ) notes that the 100 MNEs with the highest transnationality index have on average seven hierarchical levels in their ownership structure and more than 500 subsidiaries each, located in more than 50 countries, and almost 70 of them are in offshore financial centers (OFCs) – countries that offer some or all of the following: low or zero taxation, moderate or light financial regulation, and banking secrecy or anonymity (Aykut et al., 2017 ). Many manufacturing subsidiaries are owned by special-purpose entities (SPEs) located in OFCs, which themselves are owned by other SPEs (SPEs are foreign subsidiaries established to pursue specific and temporary objectives such as the financing of other foreign subsidiaries and that have few or no local employees) (OECD, 2000 ). 2 This can pose problems when using subsidiary counts to, for example, calculate the extent of a firm’s multinationality, as we discuss below in the section on firm-level data. For BRIC countries the number of indirect investments dwarfs that of direct ones, with between 50 and 80% of their outward FDI flows channeled through SPEs located in OFCs (Sauvant, 2017 ). In 2008, 60% of the outward FDI flows of Brazil went to SPEs based in six countries, four Caribbean OFCs – the British Virgin Islands (BVI), the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, and the Netherlands Antilles – as well as the Netherlands and Luxembourg, while in 2014 70% of Russia’s inward and outward FDI flows originated from, and went to, OFCs based in Cyprus, the Netherlands, the BVI, Bermuda, Luxembourg, the Bahamas, and Switzerland (Aykut et al., 2017 ). Part of the flows going to OFCs may return to the investing country, a phenomenon called round-tripping, while the rest may be forwarded to other host countries, what Sutherland and Anderson ( 2015 ) call “onward-journey FDI” and the OECD “capital in transit”. Round tripping is a widespread phenomenon, undertaken by firms of every country, but especially prevalent in the case of China, Russia, Canada, and Indonesia, for which it accounts for more than 15% of inward FDI (Damgaard, Elkjaer & Johannessen, 2019 ). Round-tripping is undertaken to minimize tax, to hide the identity of the ultimate owners, and to reduce home-country political risk and capital controls (Borga & Caliandro, 2018 ; Karhunen, Ledyaeva, & Brouthers, 2021 ). It results in over-estimating the amount of investment, since funds sent from a country to an OFC and then round-tripped back to that country are counted twice, leading to volume biases.

Taking into account the sums that transit through OFCs can have a dramatic impact on the amount and geographic distribution of FDI flows and stocks. In 2013, for example, 70% of Chinese FDI outflows went to OFCs – Hong Kong, the BVI, and the Cayman Islands – with Hong Kong receiving 60% of these flows. Figures for 2016 are 71.4%, with 58.2% going to Hong Kong (Sutherland, Hennart & Anderson, 2019 , Table 2). Based on Xiao’s ( 2004 ) research, Casanova, Garcia-Herrera and Xia ( 2015 ) estimate that only 30% of the sums recorded as being sent to Hong Kong actually remained there, while 40% went back to China (round-tripping), and 30% were forwarded to other countries (onward-journey FDI). They assume that the final geographical destination of onward-journey flows was proportional to those directly sent from China. They also redistribute the sums sent to the BVI based on the share of direct flows received by each country (with Hong Kong excluded), while the sums sent to the Cayman Islands are redistributed to North America, Latin America, and Europe using the same formula. The results of this exercise are dramatic. The stock of Chinese investment abroad falls by 25% (from US $660 billion to $498 billion), while that in North America and Europe doubles. Recent estimates by the OECD that report both immediate and ultimate investors highlight the full extent of the problems caused by using FDI flow and stock data based on immediate rather than ultimate destinations: taking into account onward-journey Chinese investment flows increased the 2015 Chinese stock of FDI in Hungary by a factor of eight, in Italy by a factor of six, and in France by a factor of three (Sutherland et al., 2019 , Table 3).

As well as having huge impacts on the measured amount and geographic distribution of MNE activity, leading to volume and geographical biases, conventional FDI reporting results in industrial composition biases (i.e., biases towards services) because most SPEs are registered as providing business services. FDI statistics show that in 2012 only 6% of Chinese outward FDI stock was in manufacturing, while 33% was in business services (Zhou & Leung, 2015 ). These figures clearly understate the share of Chinese overseas activity in manufacturing and overstate that in services, since in China manufacturing was that year the recipient of 27% of private domestic loans while that going to business services was negligible. SPEs are the cause of a similar bias towards services in US FDI statistics. Because their MNE parents describe the activity of the large number of SPEs they own as services, US data show manufacturing accounting for only 21% of the US stock of outward FDI when reported by the industry of the subsidiary, but 59% when reported by that of the parent (Whichard, 2008 ). In short, the omission of round-tripping and onward-journey FDI flows in published FDI statistics leads to very serious inaccuracies.

The existence of volume, geographical, and industrial composition biases in FDI data owing to onward-journey capital flows has been known for at least three decades (Cantwell, 1992 ). Strangely, they have not been properly acknowledged or dealt with – most likely because of the considerable challenge of doing so. Buckley et al., ( 2007 ), for example, the most cited study of Chinese outward foreign direct investment and the 2017 winner of a Journal of International Business Studies Decade Award, study the geographical distribution of annual outflows of Chinese FDI to 49 countries, including Hong Kong (but excluding the BVI and the Cayman Islands). They do not address the fact that part of the funds going to Hong Kong and sent onwards to the other countries in their sample are not counted since these flows are not registered as coming out of China, but out of Hong Kong. The omission of these onward-journey flows from Hong Kong is likely to have seriously distorted their results (as is the omission of onward-journey flows from the Cayman Islands and BVI). To their credit, in their retrospective on the decade award prize, they acknowledge some of these data issues (Buckley et al., 2017 ). Sutherland et al. ( 2019 ) documents similar problems in other articles on Chinese FDI published in the Journal of International Business Studies over the past decade, further highlighting the scale and nature of these measurement problems. 3

A second problem with FDI flows is that they only measure funds coming from a parent to its subsidiary, not the total amount of investment made by the subsidiary in the host country. Yet, we know that a significant share of the financing of foreign subsidiaries is obtained from local sources. Lehman, Sayek and Kang ( 2004 ) found that in 1999 US majority-owned foreign subsidiaries (MOFAs) obtained 29.4% of their financing from such sources. One would expect the MNE preference for local financing to be greater the more competitive local financial markets, and it is therefore not surprising that the authors find the proportion of funds sourced locally to be higher in economically developed countries (39.6%) than in developing ones (30%). Taking advantage of the fact that the US publishes data on both the sales and value added of US subsidiaries (of MOFAs for value added) in a given host country, as well as on the stock of inward US FDI in that country, Beugelsdijk, Hennart, Slangen and Smeets ( 2010 ) look at the factors that affect the difference between the value of inward FDI and the value added and sales of all subsidiaries of a given country in a host country. They find that the underestimation by FDI stocks of subsidiary sales and value added is greater in countries with more developed financial markets, presumably because MNEs use more local financing in those countries.

A third limitation of FDI data lies in their recording only financial resources, yet the economic activity generated by a subsidiary also depends on the contribution of its employees, with labor productivity affected by the industry of the subsidiary and by country-specific factors. Everything else constant, the higher a host country’s labor productivity, the greater the extent to which inward FDI stocks will underestimate subsidiary activity. Since we would expect the use of local financing and labor’s contribution to sales and value added to be greater in more economically developed countries, the underestimation of economic activity by FDI stocks is therefore also likely to be greater in those countries than in less economically developed ones. This implies that using FDI stocks as a proxy for the amount of aggregate subsidiary activity introduces a systematic bias if that amount is correlated with the study’s dependent variable. Habib and Zurawiki ( 2002 ), for example, attempt to determine if a country’s level of corruption deters inward investment by foreign MNEs. They proxy that investment by FDI inflows. Because of the greater possibility of borrowing locally to finance the subsidiary, FDI inflows will cover a smaller part of the total investment made by a foreign subsidiary when that investment is made in a more economically developed country than when made in a developing country. Consequently, the FDI figures they use in their regressions systematically underestimate the real value of the investment made by subsidiaries located in more developed countries. Because a country’s level of corruption is likely to be inversely correlated with its level of economic development, the results of studies that use FDI inflows to look at the relationship between a country’s level of corruption and its ability to attract foreign economic activity will be biased as the measured level of inward foreign investment in developed countries will be systematically lower than the actual one. Habib and Zurawiki’s findings may then be an underestimate of the negative relationship between a country’s extent of corruption and the level of foreign economic activity it attracts.

The use of FDI flows and stocks has still further limitations. FDI inward and outward flows are the sum of net equity flows from MNE parents to their subsidiaries, the reinvested earnings of those subsidiaries, and net intracompany loans between parents and subsidiaries. Both inward and outward flows can be negative, for example when loan repayments by the subsidiaries of MNEs located in the country offset new equity coming into the country. While data on these three components of inward and outward flows are published separately by the OECD and the IMF, most researchers have used aggregate figures calculated on a net basis. 4 Yet without looking at the disaggregated figures one is unable to tell whether an outward flow of zero corresponds to the case of no investment flow or to that of outflows matching inflows. Kerner ( 2014 ) provides an interesting example. In 2010, US FDI outflows to Moldova were close to zero. That year, US MOFAs had only US $2 million in fixed capital and about 100 employees in that country. That same year, FDI flows to Poland were also approximately zero. Between 2004 and 2005, however, the 193 non-bank US MOFAs in Poland added 13,000 employees and produced $679 million in added value. The zero FDI inflows figure for Poland was due to the fact that equity outflows (minus US $30 million) and intercompany debt outflows (minus US $163 million) netted out reinvested earnings (plus US $194 million) but one would not have been able to know that when using aggregated figures – those published by UNCTAD, for example. Instead, one might have concluded that US MNEs made no new investments in Poland. The fact that both inflows and outflows are calculated on a net basis causes problems for studies that use aggregate FDI flows as a proxy for the economic activity of MNE subsidiaries in a country. Bruno et al. ( 2021 ), for example, investigate how much additional incoming direct investment a country receives if it joins a custom union such as the European Union. They measure new investment using UNCTAD data on aggregated FDI inflows, that is the sum of equity flows, reinvested earnings, and intercompany debt. When faced with negative values for these flows, the authors treat them as zero (Bruno et al., 2021 , footnote 7). This is problematic as a negative net value, caused for example by the repayment of intracompany loans by subsidiaries already in the country, may mask positive new investment into the country by new and/or incumbent firms.

The measurement of FDI stocks is also tricky. They should be estimated at market value, but often are at historical cost, or are obtained by cumulating flows. Databases of FDI stocks include estimates obtained from all three methods, making cross-country comparisons hazardous (UNCTAD, 2013 ). 5 The United States provides FDI stock data on both an historical and a market value basis, so we can get an idea of the size of the gap between these two estimation methods. On a market value basis, foreign FDI stock in the US in 2016, US $6.6 trillion, was almost double that on a historical cost basis, US $3.7 trillion (Sauvant, 2017 ).

All this said, it is easy to understand the attractiveness of FDI data. FDI datasets can be downloaded for free from public databases and purport to measure the sum of the activities of all subsidiaries of a given country into a host country; they cover many countries and are available for long periods – Mariotti and Marzano’s ( 2021 ) UNCTAD dataset covers 63 countries over 37 years. The potential alternatives pale in comparison. Recent attempts have been made to obtain better estimates of the final ultimate destinations and origins of FDI flows by stripping out onward journey flows from aggregate FDI figures (Damgaard et al., 2019 ; Borga & Callandro, 2018 ). These estimates, however, are obtained by marrying firm-level data (from Orbis) with newly published OECD data that report FDI by immediate and ultimate destination and by instrument (i.e., SPE or not), and require making fairly strong assumptions. Moreover, they only attempt to account for the problem of onward-journey flows, and do not address the other issues we have mentioned. Ideally, one would like to use data such as the value added generated by all subsidiaries of foreign MNEs in a given host country, or their sales, or even their employment. With some exceptions such as the United States, countries do not collect, or do not make public, such figures for inward subsidiary activity, or for the outward economic activity of the subsidiaries of their own MNEs. Some of the most comprehensive firm-level databases, such as Toyo Keizai ( 2022 ) which covers the foreign subsidiaries of Japanese MNEs, do not provide systematic data on subsidiary sales. Collecting such data from national firm-level databases requires a significant effort. In fact, as we see in the next section, some of the same problems present in country-level FDI data also afflict firm-level data.

Table 1 summarizes the problems identified in this section and makes some suggestions on how to alleviate some of them. Geographical and volume biases due to the classification of FDI flows based on immediate origin and destination can be partially remedied using databases that classify flows based on ultimate source (i.e., Germany rather than Hungary in our Deutsche Telekom example) and destination. Such data has been published by the OECD for 19 countries ( https://stats.oecd.org ). Damgaard et al. ( 2019 ) have made available at https://nielsjohnnessen.net/FDIdatabase their estimates for the countries not covered by the OECD database. Industrial composition biases can be minimized by classifying foreign subsidiaries by the industry of the parent rather than by that of the subsidiary. The best measures of the economic activity of foreign subsidiaries in a host country are its value added, followed by its sales, and then its employment. These measures avoid the biases caused by local financing, but are unfortunately only available for a few countries. The OECD and IMF (but not UNCTAD) break down FDI flows into their three components, net equity flows, reinvested earnings, and intracompany loans. Lastly, one can obtain very rough estimates of FDI stock at market value for countries that only provide values at historical cost by looking at the relationship between the two in countries that report both.

Measuring MNE activity at the firm level

IB scholars are increasingly using secondary data taken from firm-level datasets. These datasets are of many types. Some are produced from surveys undertaken by national statistical offices. The most complete are the censuses and surveys of foreign direct investment abroad and foreign investment in the United States produced by the US Department of Commerce. One drawback of such data is that firm-level information has to remain confidential, so statistical analyses at the firm level can only be made using the agency’s computers at its premises.

Scholars can also use country-specific commercial databases, for example CSMAR (China), Prowess (India), NEEDS (Japan), and Compustat (United States). These databases provide balance-sheet items for all firms based in one country. Their coverage of a firm’s foreign activities is uneven. Compustat, for example, publishes data on foreign sales extracted from firm 10K reports to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). However, the SEC lets firms define how they want to report their geographic segments, so firms vary on how they define them. Compustat only reports four geographic segments, including the home market, so it is difficult to make detailed comparisons of geographic reach across firms (Wieserma & Bowen, 2011 ). The national focus of these databases makes it also difficult to make international comparisons.

IB scholars can also tap global commercial databases of foreign entries, be it greenfield investments (Financial Times fDi Markets) or mergers and acquisitions (Thompson Financial Security Data Corporation; Bureau van Dijk Zephyr). However, these databases usually lack detailed firm-level data, and thus matching is often required. Orbis, a commercial database that provides a variety of financial information on parents (assets, sales, profitability) as well as on their subsidiaries and ownership chains (immediate and ultimate owners) for more than 300 million firms worldwide, has proved to be particularly attractive to IB researchers – a search of leading IB journals returns 120 recent articles using data drawn from that database. Orbis makes it possible to obtain large samples of foreign subsidiaries from different parts of the world. However, some of the problems identified in the previous section on country-level data arise also when dealing with firm-level data such as those provided by Orbis. Specifically, the presence of SPEs, and the difficulty of separating them from bona fide subsidiaries (i.e., subsidiaries engaged in value-adding economic activity), is likely to cause problems. Those problems manifest themselves in various ways, from how to identify MNEs to how to measure the extent and speed of their foreign expansion. Below we provide a few examples.

Estrin, Meyer and Pelletier ( 2018 ) use Orbis to compare the pattern of foreign countries entered by developed economy MNEs with that of their emerging market counterparts. They count the number of subsidiaries the MNEs in the two groups have established in target countries. In doing so, they do not seem to have distinguished between bona fide subsidiaries and SPEs, as indicated by their Table 2 which shows in which of 30 developed countries the emerging market MNEs in their sample located their subsidiaries. That table indicates that almost 40% of the subsidiaries of Brazilian MNEs were in the Netherlands, a surprising number given the relatively small economic size of that country. A hint of what is really going on is given by recent OECD data which breaks FDI stock down by “instrument” (i.e., whether it was in SPEs or bona fide subsidiaries), and which shows that 65% of the US $4.37 trillion FDI stock in the Netherlands was SPE-related. 8 This opens the possibility that many of the Brazilian subsidiaries in the Netherlands listed in Orbis might be SPEs. We looked in Orbis at the 173 Brazilian subsidiaries in the Netherlands in 2020 and found that 62 of them, or 35.8%, were investment holding companies (NACE code 6420) – the most common type of SPE – with very few employees or none at all. In Luxembourg, which Meyer and Pelletier’s Table 2 shows was host to 2.3% of all Brazilian subsidiaries, almost half of them were SPEs. SPEs, on the other hand, made up only 2.5% of all Brazilian subsidiaries in the UK and 6.1% of those in Germany. Given the large number of SPEs and their uneven distribution across host countries, not distinguishing them from bona fide subsidiaries is likely to affect the result of studies which, like Estrin et al., proxy the level of foreign investment by the number of subsidiaries. 9 We would expect the presence of SPEs to also contaminate the results of studies that rely on subsidiary counts to analyze the distribution of foreign investment over time and across industries.

One way to define an MNE is as a firm that owns at least one fully-controlled foreign subsidiary (Bruno et al., 2021 ; De Jong & van Houten, 2014 ). A significant number of MNEs, however, are only multinational by virtue of having SPE subsidiaries. This is quite common in the case of Chinese firms because of the use of such SPEs for round-tripping. Counting SPEs as bona fide subsidiaries will result in the inclusion of purely domestic firms in MNE samples (Sutherland et al., 2019 ).

Some authors have also measured a firm’s degree of internationalization by the number of its foreign subsidiaries, or the ratio of the number of foreign subsidiaries over all subsidiaries. Liang, Ren and Sun ( 2015 ) construct a degree of globalization index for Chinese MNEs as the average of their foreign sales to total sales, foreign assets to total assets, and number of foreign branches and subsidiaries over total number of branches and subsidiaries. One difficulty with this measure is the large number of SPEs among the foreign subsidiaries of Chinese firms. As of November 2021, there were 138,118 subsidiaries incorporated outside of China that had a Chinese ultimate owner. Of these, 10,653, or 7.7% of the total, are likely to be SPEs. 10 Hence, any major differences between firms in their use of SPEs is likely to bias the results. The same issue arises in, for example, Yang, Martins and Driffield ( 2013 ).

A common way to measure a firm’s internationalization breadth has also been to count the number of countries in which it has subsidiaries (e.g., Lu & Beamish, 2004 ; Tallman & Li, 1996 ; Zahra, 2003 ). The presence of SPEs, however, makes this an imperfect measure. This is because in some countries the only subsidiaries a firm has are SPEs. Orbis shows that China’s Fosun International, for example, had subsidiaries in 12 different countries. In four of these, however, i.e., Hong Kong, the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg and the US, the firm had no bona fide subsidiaries, its subsidiaries there being labeled as “investment holding companies” or being active in “business and other management consultancy activities”, “advertising” (in the Cayman Islands) and performing “other financial service activities” (in Hong Kong). Counting foreign subsidiaries that are most likely SPEs as bona fide ones will thus lead to an overestimation of the true breadth of an MNE’s internationalization. 11

The presence of SPEs is also likely to affect the results of studies that rely on subsidiary count to measure internationalization speed. This is the case with Kim, Wu, Schuler and Hoskisson ( 2020 ) who use data from 767 publicly listed Chinese MNEs to look at how speed of intra-regional internationalization versus inter-regional internationalization affects performance, with speed measured by the number of new subsidiaries created per year. They counted all foreign subsidiaries, “irrespective of where they were located” (Kim et al., 2020 : 1086). Yet not all subsidiaries are created equal: we have seen that many of those established by Chinese MNEs in Hong Kong, Singapore, the Cayman Islands, and the BVI are SPEs (Anderson & Sutherland, 2015 ), but this is also increasingly the case with those in the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The presence of SPEs thus contaminate measures of internationalization speed based on subsidiary counts because adding an SPE can be done at the stroke of a pen, considerably faster than setting up or acquiring a manufacturing plant.

Lastly, studies using secondary firm-level databases to compare MNEs originating from different countries assign country of origin, for example whether the MNE is based in a developed or emerging market, by identifying their global ultimate owner (Estrin et al., 2018 ; Jindra, Hassan, & Cantner, 2016 ; Jones & Temouri, 2016 ). This is problematic, however, as some MNEs may establish their legal domicile in a country that is not the one where they conduct most of their business, a phenomenon called corporate inversion (Whichard, 2008 ). Inversions became a hot political issue in the US when some US firms acquired foreign firms in low-tax countries (such as Ireland) and had the acquisition acquire the parents back so as to shift their legal domicile to the lower-tax country. They are, however, even more common outside the US. Chinese MNEs, for example, owing to the practice of round-tripping, have long been comfortable with inverting to OFCs such as the Cayman Islands (De Jong, Greeven, & Ebbers, 2017 ). The number of inverted Chinese MNEs is quite large: using Orbis, we identified 1087 MNEs (i.e., defined as owning at least one foreign subsidiary) with ultimate owners (using a 50% plus ownership stake) based in the Cayman Islands that were majority owner of at least one subsidiary in China. The business of these firms (which include major firms such as Alibaba Group Holding Limited, Tencent Holdings, Kingsoft Corporation Limited, Mengniu Dairy, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, China Special Steel Wire Rod Group Ltd, Dynasty Fine Wines Group Ltd, and China Shanshui Cement Group Ltd.) was primarily in China so, for all intent and purposes, they are Chinese firms (though some may have bona fide , i.e., non-SPE, foreign subsidiaries). Scholars generating samples of MNEs from a given country based on ultimate ownership criteria, an approach most often employed by empirical studies using the Orbis database, need therefore to be mindful not to exclude inverted firms, which are sometimes a significant percentage of MNEs from that country. 12 While the full extent of inversions and their impact on studies using Orbis is unknown, Sigler, Martinus, Iacopini and Derudder ( 2020 ) found that 3% of MNEs they sampled using Orbis had been inverted. Their sample, however, did not include many emerging market countries, like China, in which the share of inverted firms is likely to be far higher.

As mentioned above, nearly one-third of global FDI transits through OFCs, well-known tax havens such as the BVI and the Cayman Islands, but also countries such as the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Ireland (Haberly & Wójcik, 2015 ). Authors of studies that identify foreign subsidiaries using firm-level databases need therefore to be very careful when building their samples. Yet very few studies explicitly attempt to exclude all SPEs. We suspect that this is not solely because it is difficult and time-consuming to do so, but also because there is a general lack of awareness of how pervasive SPEs are within MNE ownership and control chains. 13 To compound the problem, recent research (Borga & Callandro, 2018 ) shows that MNEs are increasingly transiting capital not only through SPEs but also through various kinds of other less obvious foreign subsidiaries – vastly complicating the process of tracking genuine MNE investments. Excluding SPEs may therefore not be sufficient to eliminate all onward-journey subsidiaries.

Table 2 summarizes some of the problems discussed here and possible remedies. SPEs should be removed when assessing whether a firm is an MNE, when calculating the overall level of economic activity by firms of country A in country B, and when counting the number of foreign countries in which a firm operates and the speed at which it creates new subsidiaries. One solution might be to eliminate all subsidiaries domiciled in known OFCs, such as the Cayman Islands, the BVI, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The problem is that some OFCs, like the last two countries mentioned, are also home to bona fide subsidiaries. A better way is to look at the industrial classification of the subsidiary given by Orbis and at their employee count. Subsidiaries with NACE code 6420 (investment holding companies) are likely to be SPEs. However, in some subsidiaries NACE 6420 is only listed as a secondary code, while the primary code might be something else, like “transmission of other information service activities” (NACE 6399) or “other information technology and computer service activities” (NACE 6209), for example. This again complicates the challenge of identifying SPEs. Whenever Orbis provides subsidiary employment data, SPEs can be identified as those having no or very few employees. The omission of inverted firms from country samples can be avoided by looking at a country’s most common inversion destination, for example Hong Kong, the Cayman Islands, and the BVI in the Chinese case, and then adding to the sample inverted firms registered there.

As we said at the outset, availability and reliability of data are a major challenge for IB researchers. A look at how IB scholars measure the foreign activities of a central actor in the field, the MNE, shows the extent of the challenge. We could have given other examples. 14 Our point is that IB scholars face additional data challenges compared to researchers in fields that study purely national phenomena, as the latter can rely on extensive domestic databases that provide the data they need. Theory poses a second challenge for those conducting IB research. Just as we have concentrated on one issue, the measurement of MNE activity using country-level and firm-level data, to illustrate data challenges, we focus on one theory, transaction cost theory, to highlight theory challenges.

It is generally agreed that concepts and theories are developed within the context of a particular culture. As Hofstede ( 1993 : 82) puts it, “management scientists, theorists, and writers are human too: they grew up in a particular society in a particular period, and their ideas cannot help but reflect the constraints of their environment”. Problems arise when theorists and their followers claim universal applicability for their theories when in fact there is not. Uncovering the hidden culturally-based assumptions behind many of our existing theories so as to correctly apply them to different contexts is a major challenge facing the IB field, one not faced by scholars who apply domestically developed theories to domestic issues.

There is overwhelming evidence that the field of management, including IB, is dominated by scholars from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, i.e., Anglo-Saxon countries. Between 1971 and 2015, three-quarters of the articles on IB topics in 14 top-rated journals (the three top-rated IB journals plus 11 top disciplinary journals) were written by scholars based in the USA, the UK, Canada, and Australia (Aïssaoui, Geringer & Livanis, 2020 ). 15 Harzing and Metz ( 2013 ) looked at the geographical location of the editors and editorial board members of 57 journals in five areas of management (operations management, international business, general management and strategy, human resource management/organizational behavior/industrial relations, and marketing) at 5-year intervals between 1989 and 2009. In 2009, 52 journal editors out of 57 were based in an Anglo-Saxon country (38 in the United States alone). The proportion of editorial board members based in those countries was 84.5% in 1989 and, in 2009, two decades later, still high at 77% (see also Meyer, 2006 ). While some of these scholars were born in non-Anglo-Saxon countries, many obtained their doctorates from Anglo-Saxon universities, and one can surmise that they have been influenced by their Anglo-Saxon training. 16 Note also that the percentage of Anglo-Saxons on the board of professional journals constitutes a lower bound on the influence of Anglo-Saxon ideas and beliefs in management – and on the IB field – given that many researchers outside the US and UK have been trained in Anglo-Saxon countries and that many European and Asian universities host visiting scholars from the US and the UK and encourage their faculty to co-author with them (Aïssaoui et al., 2020 ; Shenkar, 2004 ).

Boyacigiller and Adler ( 1988 ) note, citing Triandis ( 1972 ), that identifying the impact of culture on the development of theories is difficult, but they convincingly show that American cultural values have influenced the particular ways some US scholars have thought about organizational commitment, individual motivation, and leadership. 17 Hofstede found that Anglo-Saxon countries scored high on individualism – 91 for the US, 90 for Australia, 89 for the UK, and 80 for Canada, vs. 20 for China and 48 for India. 18 He describes individualism as “the degree to which people in a country prefer to act as individuals rather than as members of groups” (Hofstede, 1993 : 89). One would expect scholars living in countries that rank high in individualism to emphasize the free will of actors while downplaying the influence of the social group to which they belong.

One would therefore expect Anglo-Saxon authors to over-emphasize individual action and to under-emphasize social processes. 18 We think it is possible to discern these biases in one of the dominant theories in IB, transaction cost theory (TCT). In the following paragraphs we give a few examples of this by looking at the way TCT has been used by IB scholars, and show that these cultural biases can be remedied without damaging the theory’s core. Indeed, by explicitly identifying these biases, scholars can arrive at a richer and more comprehensive version of TCT which, as we will show, retains strong predictive power in contexts that are significantly different from the Anglo-Saxon one in which it was principally developed.

Individualistic cultures stress the ability of individuals to unilaterally control their environment. Triandis ( 1993 : 158) notes that “The most important facet of collectivism is an interdependent self… the most important facet of individualism is an independent self.” It is therefore not surprising that early applications of TCT to the foreign entry mode choice (Anderson & Gatignon, 1986 ) assumed that, when it came to entering a foreign market, the MNE was always in the catbird seat and could, unless constrained by host governments, unilaterally choose whatever entry mode it wanted. In the words of Padmanabhan and Cho ( 1996 : 47), the entry mode choice for an MNE “involves tradeoffs related to the [MNE’s] level of resource commitment, the degree of control, the specification and assumption of risks and returns, and the degree of global rationalization.” Researchers with a less individualistic outlook have realized, however, that entry into a foreign country is a cooperative endeavor because the MNE almost always requires complementary inputs to exploit its intangibles there. These complementary inputs – labor, utilities, land, logistics, and access to local customers – are typically controlled by local parties, firms, and individuals. Ignoring these local suppliers of complementary inputs limits the explanatory power of the theory. First, it erroneously suggests that the entry mode decision is unilaterally taken by the foreign investor. In reality, MNEs have the liberty to choose between a wholly-owned subsidiary and a joint venture only when complementary inputs can be obtained on efficient markets. When they cannot, the only efficient way to access such inputs is to enlist the cooperation of their owners by offering them a share of the profits of the venture. In other words, MNEs do not always joint venture because they want to, as suggested by Anderson and Gatignon, but often because they have to. Understanding that MNEs need the cooperation of owners of local factors of production makes it possible to analyze how the transactional characteristics of these factors combine with those of the intangibles contributed by the MNE to determine the optimal entry mode (Hennart, 2009 ). Taking into account local owners of complementary inputs also explains why some local firms have been able to leverage control of these inputs to offset their initial technological handicap and successfully compete with large foreign MNEs in their home market (Hennart, 2012 ).

The Williamsonian version of TCT can also be criticized for its over-emphasis on the determinants of market efficiency relative to those of firm efficiency. This focus on markets is not surprising, given that, as Triandis ( 1993 : 160) notes, “the prototypical individualistic social relationship is the market.” The core argument of TCT is generally presented as follows: the chosen governance structure (market, hierarchy, or hybrid) is the one that is aligned with the attributes of the transaction, which are asset specificity, uncertainty, and frequency (Cuypers, Hennart, Silverman, & Ertug, 2021 ; David & Han, 2004 ). When these are high, markets will fail, and this failure will lead to hierarchical governance (i.e., firms) being selected. Hence the prediction that firms will be the chosen governance structure is based on the extent of market efficiency. However, there are no reasons why market failure should guarantee firm success. A governance structure (market or firm) is chosen if the benefits that arise from the organization of interdependences are higher than the costs of doing so. In some circumstances, these costs may be higher than the benefits for both markets and firms. Consequently, market failure is not a sufficient condition for the existence of firms. Consider the following example used by Hennart ( 1982 ). In the first 80 years of the 19th century, UK firms had a technological lead over their continental European and American rivals that can only be compared to that enjoyed by US firms after the Second World War. But while the US technological lead was exploited through the establishment of foreign subsidiaries by US MNEs, that did not happen in the UK case until the very end of the period (Jones, 1996 , 2000 ). Instead, UK technological advances were transferred overseas through other means: the sale of products, the smuggling of machinery, the hiring of skilled UK workers by foreign firms, and the emigration of UK entrepreneurs. The absence of UK MNEs cannot be explained by the superiority of the market processes used to transfer knowledge at that time since the licensing market was even more imperfect then than later in the 20th century when US technology was exploited abroad by US MNEs. The simplified version of TCT under which the choice of organizational form depends on market failure, itself a function of the levels of asset specificity, uncertainty, and frequency, is therefore only half of a comprehensive theory of governance choice. A full theory simultaneously considers the factors that affect the efficiency of markets and those that affect the efficiency of firms, and assess for each transaction their absolute and relative efficiency. Williamson was aware of that when he wrote that “one of the tasks of transaction cost economics is to assess purported bureaucratic failures in comparative institutional terms” (Williamson, 1993b :119) and indeed he addresses the issue in both his 1975 (Williamson, 1975 ) and 1985 books (Williamson, 1985 ). But he does not systematically develop the variables driving these hierarchical failures as he does those responsible for market failures.

TCT allows us to do that. TCT scholars recognize that to yield benefits interdependencies must be organized: parties must be apprised of the potential benefits of organizing the interdependence, and a way must be found to avoid excessive bargaining over the distribution of the potential gains and to make sure that promises are kept. This incurs costs because of the existence of two basic human characteristics – bounded rationality and opportunism. These two characteristics imply that it is costly to efficiently inform parties of what needs to be done and to reward them for their contribution. Hennart ( 1982 , 1993 ) has argued that there are two generic ways to perform these two tasks: one can decentralize information gathering and provide output-based incentives, i.e., use the price system, or one can centralize information and control behavior, i.e., use hierarchy. While all institutions use a mix of these two generic methods of organization, firms mostly use hierarchy. In firms, bosses centralize information and direct worker behavior. Output is generated through the control of behavior, either directly through real time direct observation or indirectly through bureaucratic control techniques, such as accounting. While we lack space here to go into details, one can show that the techniques available for directing employees and monitoring their behavior were just too crude in the 19th century to support the profitable operations of UK MNEs. Consequently, knowledge was transferred through other ways. By the 20th century, management techniques had improved sufficiently to make knowledge exploitation through MNEs possible, even though the market for knowledge had improved in the meantime (Hennart, 1982 ).

Williamson has used the term “high-powered incentives” to describe those used in markets, and “low-powered incentives” to describe those used in firms (see for example Williamson, 1985 : 140). This wording can be interpreted as suggesting that firms cannot use the strong incentives used in markets, and are thus at some inherent disadvantage. That Williamson sees markets as providing unique (and superior) incentives is reinforced by his writing a few pages later that “the market is a marvel… because of its remarkable capacity to present and preserve high-powered incentives” (Williamson, 1985 : 161). Such a stance neglects the fact that while the price system provides incentives to market actors to exert effort and show initiative by rewarding them based on their output, i.e., it offers output-based incentives, firms reward employees based on their behavior. Employees who do not follow managerial guidelines will be sanctioned, and there is no reason to expect that being docked one day of pay will be less effective in influencing their behavior than losing one day’s revenues will be to self-employed individuals. Williamson’s ( 1985 : 140) argument that “firms cannot mimic the high-powered incentives of markets without experiencing added costs” seems to overlook the fact that firms do not need to use output-based high-powered incentives because they can exert high-powered constraints on behavior. Providing high-powered output incentives stimulates high output, but often also the generation of negative externalities. For instance, the literature has shown that franchisees, who are subject to output-based high-powered incentives because they get to keep all of the income they produce minus the franchise fee, are tempted to reduce quality to maximize their income (Brickley & Dark, 1987 ). Trademark owners for whom consistent quality is important may prefer to use the high-powered behavior incentives provided by employment contracts and have their own employees run the outlets. Michael ( 2000 ), for example, shows that product quality in chains that run their outlets with employees is higher than in those that do it with franchisees.

Williamson’s distinction between personal interactions and business transactions, and his under-emphasis of the role social constraints can play in enforcing the latter, seems also to reflect the relatively greater focus that US culture puts on individuals than on the social context in which they operate. In an article where he discusses the notion of trust, Williamson argues that the word trust should be reserved for non-calculative relationships that are characterized by “(1) the absence of monitoring, (2) favorable or forgiving predilections, and (3) discreteness” (Williamson, 1993a : 484). For him, such trust “is warranted only for very special personal relations that would be seriously degraded if a calculative orientation were permitted. Commercial relations do not qualify” (ibid, 486). This suggests a strict separation between business transactions and personal relations, where the former are strictly calculative while the latter are not. This separation is not universal. In many – perhaps most – parts of the world, business is done with persons with whom one has close relationships, so trust, in the Williamsonian sense, is a feature of both personal and business relationships. 20 Why is this the case? Because, consistent with the TCT idea that governance needs to be aligned with the characteristics of transactions, and that these characteristics are influenced by the institutional environment, the absence of formal market-supporting institutions such as courts increases the attractiveness of doing business with family and close friends over that of dealing with outsiders. This in turn has important theoretical and practical implications for foreign market entry, as it explains the considerable advantage held by incumbents over new entrants in countries characterized by underdeveloped formal market institutions.

TCT scholars see the choice of governance as being influenced by the institutional environment which defines the rules of the games, i.e., property rights, contract laws, norms, customs, and the like (Williamson, 1993b , 2000 ). They have been interested in working out the mechanisms by which different rules of the game yield different types of optimal governance. With few exceptions (Williamson, 1991 ), Williamson’s research has mostly focused on market transactions and their enforcement in the US context. Some of these transactions are self-enforcing because of low asset specificity, while others require safeguards which usually take the form of contracts. Contracts are formal, usually written, legal documents by which parties enter into mutual obligations enforceable by courts or arbitrators based on a set of laws. Specifying ex ante these mutual obligations reduces the chance of ex post opportunism, which is especially useful to parties who have to make investments which are specific to their partners. Williamson has focused on the limits of such contracts (leading to vertical integration) and on the ways to make them more efficient, for example by making credible commitments (Williamson, 1985 , chapters 5, 7 and 8). 21 In this environment, found in the United States and in a few other – primarily Anglo-Saxon – countries, individuals contract with a wide range of partners, some known and some unknown, with dispute settlement handled by third parties, generally courts and arbitrators, a system that has been called “rule-based” governance. In many other countries, transactions are embedded in relationships, and their enforcement is effected through bilateral or multilateral social constraints – a system of relation-based governance (Li, 2003 ; Li, Park & Li, 2004 ). In China, for example, business transactions are conducted through guanxi, which Standiford and Marshall ( 2000 : 21), quoting Yang ( 1994 ), describe as “cultivating personal relationships through the exchange of favors and gifts for the purpose of obtaining goods and services, developing networks of mutual dependence, and creating a sense of obligation and indebtedness.” Guanxi has equivalents in many other countries, for example wa in Japan, inmaek in Korea, blat in Russia, and wasta in Arab countries (Michailova & Worm, 2003 ; Velez-Calle, Robeldo-Arialla & Rodriguez-Rios, 2015 ). In the countries listed above, and in many others, contracts and courts play a very limited role, an institutional environment very different from the one on which Williamson has mostly focused.

There is a temptation to ignore such differences, and to blindly apply the Anglo-Saxon version of TCT to East Asian contexts. Another one is to see guanxi as a uniquely Chinese phenomenon, a product of its Confucian philosophy (e.g., Chen, Chen & Huang, 2013 ). A more demanding, but also more promising, way to proceed is to attempt to see how the disconnect between the prediction of the theory and the empirical evidence can be used to modify and extend existing theories, making them more general (Shenkar, 2004 ). This is possible in the case of TCT because the theory posits that the chosen governance structure will be the one whose properties align with the characteristics of the transaction, with these characteristics in turn influenced by the institutional environment (Williamson, 2000 ). Hence applying TCT to different settings, especially non-Western ones, has the potential to enrich it and make it more robust. In our case, the task is to identify which features of the institutional environment make relation-based governance more efficient than rule-based governance (Hennart, 2015 ; Li, 2003 ; Li et al., 2004 ). Hennart ( 2015 ), for example, looks at how the characteristics of the networks in which transactions are embedded affect the costs of enforcing them. He notes that relational governance can be either bilateral or multilateral. Bilateral relational governance relies on mutual enforcement, and is based on appeals to friendship and on threats of discontinuing the relationship. One advantage of this solution over market contracts and multilateral relational governance is that one does not need to prove the existence of dishonest behavior to third parties. But this enforcement mechanism does require relationships to be long term, and hence works best when one can rely for a long period of time on a small number of geographically close partners. Multilateral relational governance relies on group reputation effects. These effects are stronger in closed networks of homogeneous members for which exit is costly. These considerations can be shown to explain not only the practice of guanxi in China, but also the use of bilateral and multilateral governance in countries such as the United States. Verbeke and Kano ( 2013 ) look at the wider, but related, phenomenon of “trading favors” and show how TCT can explain its occurrence, the form it takes, and its likely impact.

What is unique about IB research? Eden and Nielsen ( 2020 ) have argued that the field is particularly complex. Aguinis and Gabriel ( 2021 ) have responded that it is not necessarily any more complex than a number of other fields. We agree that differences in complexity between IB and domestic topics may have been overstated, but we also believe that IB researchers face some unique challenges, perhaps not due to complexity, but instead to the inadequate quantity and quality of data available and to the need to rethink the applicability of many of its imported theories in contexts that differ from the ones where they were originally elaborated.

We do not have the space to provide an extensive treatment of all the data problems faced by IB scholars. Instead, we point out to the serious issue of data equivalence in the collection of primary data. We briefly discuss how this affects interviews and surveys. We then turn to secondary data. In a recent article documenting their increasing importance in IB research, Cerar et al., ( 2021 : 1365) argue that such data needs to “be treated with the same healthy skepticism and quality checks as primary data” so as to mitigate ‘‘IB’s increasing exposure to the risks inherent in secondary data”. They note that a degree of complacency has crept into the use of such data: “references to the biases and weaknesses of such data are conspicuously absent in much of the literature. …. editors and reviewers do not consider the weaknesses and lack of mitigation possibilities inherent in secondary data as critical” (Cerar et al., 2021 : 1371). Our quick review of the pitfalls encountered in measuring just one IB construct – though a key one – the size of MNE activities outside their own country, certainly confirm their assessment. FDI flows and stocks (as epitomized by UNCTAD’s annual World Investment Report ) have been used to measure that activity at the country level without their authors seemingly aware of the limitations of such data. 22 We document the pitfalls involved and make some suggestions on how to avoid some of them.

Recently a number of firm-level databases, such as Orbis, have become available. While their broad coverage and user-friendly web interface hold out the promise of significantly improving our understanding of MNEs, we show that they are subject to some of the same problems that affect the use of FDI flow and stock data, and that the literature has not always recognized them. We suggest some partial fixes. The unavoidable conclusion from our brief foray into the use of both country-level FDI flow and stock data and firm-level data extracted from large databases is that data are a major challenge in IB.

IB researchers study phenomena in multiple contexts. Yet some of the theories they borrow were conceived by scholars working in specific environments and inevitably reflect those contexts. Often, they cannot be applied “as is” to the specific contexts being researched. Most theories used in IB were developed by scholars working in the United States and, to a lesser extent, the UK, Canada, and Australia, and hence reflect the cultural, economic, and social conditions of those countries. For that reason, their explanatory power is not always high when applied “as is” to other country contexts. In contrast to researchers in domestic fields trying to explain local phenomena with local theories, i.e., typically US phenomena with US theories, IB scholars have the challenging task of identifying the possible cultural biases of the theories they have borrowed and of extending them to fit other institutional contexts. Confronting theories to environments that differ from the ones in which they were originally developed offers the chance to enrich them by uncovering their hidden assumptions and boundary conditions, and to develop higher level, broader theories. Unfortunately, not all scholars have the confidence to tackle this challenge. Instead, some ignore the issue and simply try to apply, without modification, theories developed in Boston or San Francisco to Beijing or Singaporean contexts (see the discussion in Meyer, 2006 ). Others develop “indigenous theories” (Bruton, Zahra, Van de Ven, & Hitt, 2022). For example, some scholars have explained the relation-based governance prevalent in East Asia by Confucian philosophy, even though the use of this type of governance varies within the region and is also prevalent outside it (Li, 2013 ). Such indigenous theories fit the specific circumstances of their environment but remain unconnected to more general ones, resulting in a patchwork of incompatible theories. We have tried to show that identifying possible cultural biases in the theories we use and confronting them to diverse institutional environments can open new perspectives and enrich theories. IB scholars, who study different institutional environments, have unique opportunities to do so. But for this to happen a theory must have a built-in sensitivity to contextual differences (Muzio, 2021 ). We have shown that TCT is such a theory because it posits that the optimal governance structure depends on the specificities of the institutional environment and studies how this works out. It is therefore well equipped to accommodate different contexts. The result of the exercise, as we have attempted to show, is a version of TCT that is more general while remaining context-rich.

Is it fair to generalize from the specific data problems discussed in this article and argue that they are particularly daunting in IB? Are other theories used in IB less susceptible to cultural biases than our example of the Williamsonian version of TCT, or are those biases widespread? Is our unconscious use of theories that do not fit the varied contexts we study as big a limitation in IB as we argue it is? Are there other examples where IB researchers have used the disconnect between the empirical evidence and the predictions of borrowed theories as a lever to build more generalizable ones? Can all IB theories be leveraged in that way, as we have shown TCT can, or are other Western theories more context-specific, hence justifying an emphasis on indigenous theories, as advocated by Bruton et al. ( 2022 )? We hope our counterpoint will stimulate further debate on those issues.

We are not questioning the use of FDI data to measure equity flows between MNE parents and their subsidiaries, but only their use to measure the aggregate value added generated by these subsidiaries.

Enron’s 2000 10K filing provides a good example of that complexity. Dabhol, its ill-fated Indian power plant, was owned by a Mauritius SPE, itself owned by a Dutch SPE, itself owned by a Cayman Island SPE, which was then owned by a Delaware SPE, Enron India, LLC. So an observer looking at the first immediate owner could conclude that Dabhol was a domestic operation.

For a recent example, see Mariotti and Marzano’s ( 2021 ) study of the impact of changes in competition policy on the attractiveness of a country to foreign direct investors. They acknowledge the problems of using FDI data, but like Buckley et al. ( 2007 ), attempt to remedy them by omitting OFCs from their sample. This fix excludes genuine investments going to some of their omitted OFC (Hong Kong for example) but more importantly onward-journey investments from the eliminated OFCs to the countries that remain in their sample.

Available at https://stats.oecd.org/ and https://data.imf.org .

As an example, in the UNCTAD database Finnish FDI stocks were reported in 2013 on an historical-cost basis while US FDI stocks were on a market-value basis. Valuing FDI stocks on a historical cost basis results in an underestimation of the FDI stock of countries that are old investors relative to that of more recent investors (Bellak & Cantwell, 1996 ).

Zephyr also covers initial public offerings (IPOs), private equity, and venture capital deals.

Yang, Martins and Driffield ( 2013 ), for example, are able to build a sample of 16,000 MNEs operating in 46 countries over a 10-year period.

Over 95% of the US $3.5 trillion FDI stock in Luxembourg, 21% of US$1.45 trillion FDI stock in Switzerland, and 40% of US $1.97 trillion in the UK was sent to SPEs.

A search for subsidiaries active in NACE 6420, the most common code for SPEs, returned 23,908 subsidiaries in the Netherlands, 31,387 in Luxembourg, 1526 in Switzerland, and 21,589 in the UK, for a total of 78,440 SPE subsidiaries. For the 31 developed host countries included in Estrin et al. ( 2018 ), the total number of this type of SPE comes to 131,709. Limiting the number of such SPEs to those owned by the MNEs of the 14 advanced and emerging economy countries in the Estrin et al. ( 2018 ) sample does reduce the number of this type of SPE to 49,907, but this is still 3.1% of the total number of subsidiaries. On the other hand, if we choose a broader definition of SPEs as subsidiaries engaged in financial service activities (NACE 64) and insurance, reinsurance and pension funding (NACE 65), their number rises to 96,188, or 6% of all subsidiaries in their sample. This is too large a number to be overlooked.

Our estimation is based on the number of subsidiaries whose main activity is NACE 64 (financial service activities, except insurance and pension funding), NACE 65 (insurance and pension funding), NACE 66 (activities auxiliary to financial services and insurance activities), NACE 69 (legal and accounting activities) and NACE 77 (rental and leasing activities). It makes sense to include the latter category since many SPEs lease intellectual property to onshore Chinese operations.

As above, we define SPEs as subsidiaries whose main activity is in NACE 6420, investment holding companies. Looking at Orbis, we identified 5387 Chinese SPEs located in 49 different countries. The 1909 SPEs that were registered in 18 countries, including Singapore (1104), Luxembourg (489), the BVI (263), the Cayman Islands (11) and a few others, had a combined employee count of zero.

We searched recent articles that used Orbis to develop samples of MNEs by country of origin with ultimate ownership as a criterion and did not find any mention of special steps taken by their authors to account for inverted firms.

SPEs are not randomly distributed among all subsidiaries, so their inclusion causes more than noise: it may lead to bias. SPEs also make up a large share of all subsidiaries so the bias is not likely to disappear with an increase in sample size.

Linsi and Mügge ( 2019 ) document the poor quality of international statistics on merchandise and service trade and on portfolio investments. While accounting measures of firm profitability are fairly straightforward in a domestic context, they are problematic in IB because the published financial performance of a foreign subsidiary is affected by the firm’s internal transfer rules.

Adjusted means that in the case of jointly authored articles, the score attributed to an author is divided by the number of authors of the article. The dominance of scholars in those four countries lessened slightly to 63.8% in the 2001–2015 period, but is still high. The non-adjusted percentages for authors in the Journal of International Business Studies is similar – 74.9% in 1995–2004 and 63.9 in 2004–2014 (Cantwell, Piepenbrink, Shukla, & Vo, 2016 ).

We thank an anonymous referee for raising this point.

The topic has been recently the subject of a point-counterpoint in the Journal of Management Studies . See Filatotchev, Ireland, & Stahl ( 2022 ) and Bruton, Zahra, Van de Ven & Hitt (2022).

https://hofstede-insights.com . Accessed October 25, 2021.

There are some exceptions. Social exchange theory is attributed to George Homans, an American sociologist. We thank an anonymous referee for this insight.

This dichotomy between personal and business transactions seems rooted in the US culture with its emphasis on separation. Boyacigiller and Adler (1991: 276) note that “Americans low context orientation also underlies their concept of separation, for example, separation of church and state”.

Williamson was aware of the existence of social constraints. In Williamson ( 1985 : 120–122) he briefly describes Toyota subcontracting practices and concludes that “the hazards of trading are less severe in Japan than in the United States because of cultural and institutional checks on opportunism”. But he did not incorporate such constraints in his model.

In unpublished work, Beugelsdijk, Hennart, Slangen and Smeets surveyed the empirical articles published in main IB journals between 1981 and 2008 that use FDI data to measure MNE subsidiary activity. Only three of the 47 articles surveyed mention some of the data limitations we identify in this article. None of them mention them all.

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Hennart, JF., Sutherland, D. International business research: The real challenges are data and theory. J Int Bus Stud 53 , 2068–2087 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41267-022-00566-y

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Celebrating HR Professionals on International Human Resources Day

A group of people standing in front of a white background.

May 20 is the fourth annual World Federation of People Management Associations (WFPMA) International Human Resources Day. The observance honors all the hardworking HR professionals worldwide who make HR a critical function across organizations and industries.

"Many thanks to my colleagues whose leadership and vision brought International HR Day to life in 2019. Little did we know what challenges awaited the world over the next few years. Through it all, HR delivered with resilience, resourcefulness and dedication," said Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., SHRM-SCP, president and chief executive officer of SHRM. (Taylor is also the WFPMA delegate for the U.S. and the immediate past president of the North American Human Resource Management Association.) He continued, "With much of that calamity behind us, we look forward to the horizon in keeping with the 2023 International HR Day theme: 'Shaping the New Future.' "

In recognition of International HR Day, SHRM Online is recognizing and celebrating the impact of HR professionals and their journeys into the field.

Below, four HR professionals share their "why" for working in HR and how their role is shaping the lives of others.

Mary Jo Swearingen, SHRM-CP, SHRM Emerging Professional Advisory Council Member, HR Business Partner, LBMC Employment Partners

"People are businesses' most impactful asset. HR is advocating for strategic initiatives that recognize ever-changing human needs and boost business productivity. This wave of trusted and educated HR professionals is driving important conversations in the workplace related to operations and the betterment of the workplace for all.

"I stumbled into the HR program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Working in HR has developed a higher level of balanced empathy in how I conduct myself. I love connecting with other HR professionals to hear what a career in HR means to them."

Liz Sheffield, SHRM-CP, Content Marketing Manager, PayScale

"I started my career 20 years ago as an HR coordinator for Starbucks. That beginning led to work in training and development, ethics and compliance, and now writing content for HR professionals. This career path in HR has allowed me to focus on engaging and empowering people; for that, I'm grateful.

"There's so much changing in the world of work today. I know we've been saying that for years, but there's no denying we are at a pivotal time. From remote work opportunities to pay transparency regulations to mental health in the workplace, HR is at the heart of how organizations operate—and how they succeed."

Heather Schechter, SHRM-SCP, APR, Chief Strategy Officer, Sunrise Management & Consulting

"People are the key to success for any organization providing a service. HR is critical to ensuring the organization treats employees with respect and care in its processes, communications, training, benefits and employee relations. By giving employees a better workplace, they have the opportunity to thrive, allowing organizations to prosper and do their best work, and we all benefit.

"I studied history in college, emphasizing communications and research. Those skills translated to working in public relations at agencies in New York City. Then I became a high school social studies teacher and a coach. When I returned to public relations, I was asked to bring this same focus on communications and engagement to our workforce. Now I am responsible for the human resources function in our growing company. I am passionate about making each employee feel valued and providing a solid base to grow in their career."

Lauren Winans, CEO and Principal HR Consultant, Next Level Benefits

"HR is the backbone of every organization. HR simultaneously supports employees and the business, making tough calls and providing recommendations that drive the organization forward. HR has a hand in all things people—and isn't that what makes up an organization? No people, no company.

"I found HR by accident or by fate; both seem appropriate! I've always enjoyed observing the inner workings of a business, how deals are made, how companies find leaders, how leaders build empires, and how employees grow and develop. From the seats of an HR department, you are so involved in many aspects of the business that you have no choice but to learn on your feet through each unique, crazy, wild experience. I love the idea of giving a voice to the employee population while supporting the mission of the business itself."

Spreading the Word

"As HR practitioners," Taylor said, "we understand that the future of work is intrinsically linked to people, the human resource. There will be continuous technological advancements. However, technology still leverages and amplifies human potential. On this International HR Day, I challenge each of you to join us in driving change in every corner of the globe. We must engage stakeholders across the spectrum to make better workplaces and a better world."

Katie Navarra is a freelance writer in New York state.

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The Project Management Experts® PM Solutions is a project management services firm helping organizations apply project management and PMO practices to improve business performance. Toll-free (US): 800.983.0388 International: +1.484.450.0100 [email protected]. 285 Wilmington-West Chester Pike Chadds Ford, PA 19317 USA
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