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

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Behrman, Jack N.
• 署名单位: University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2506
• DOI: 10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400201
• 发表日期: 2006
• 页码: 432-444
• 关键词: Multinational enterprises; transnationals; TECHNOLOGY; Foreign direct investment; integration; cross-cultural

摘要

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