International Business in a VUCA World

This volume brings together 24 chapters by researchers from around the world, who address the challenges multinational enterprises face when expanding or repositioning themselves in the global environment in the context of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). They first discuss international business in the VUCA environment, including the role of international business theory in an uncertain world, the optimal location of plants by a global firm, risk and uncertainty in the international context, and the VUCA approach and the global factory model. The next section addresses the relationship between firms and the non-market, including trade policy uncertainties and implications for global value chains, the role of intergovernmental organizations in shaping country institutional environments, the effects of introducing a tariff on trade in the automotive sector, adaptation strategies of European Union enterprises affected by sanctions on Russia, and whether fewer trade barriers and more economic freedom lead to better functioning societies. Subsequent sections cover new governance challenges in international business, including macro-environmental dynamism and its impact on a firm's risk management, the relationship between firms' top management teams and internationalization complexity, alternatives firms can use after the initial relocation of manufacturing abroad, the role of institutional context in backshoring decisions, and multinational enterprises and poverty in Europe, as well as the context of new international business operations, including early internationalizing firms, the role of the technological environment in facilitating international venturing of emerging market firms through entrepreneurial transformation, the role of market uncertainties in the internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises, and the internationalization of social enterprises. The final section describes the future of the global mobile telecommunications industry, managing ambidexterity using networking, talent management in Brazil and Russia, institutional effects on ownership in cross-border acquisitions by African firms, adaptation to foreign markets, and the impacts of institutional distance on the multinationality level of firms from developing countries. The book is based on the conferences of the European International Business Academy. -- Copyright 2019 * Portland, OR *