Word from the Guest Editors Ethics, resilience and new challenges of international management

For decades, the world has been facing multiple disasters of all kinds. These include ecological disasters, often causing natural disasters, as well as serious geopolitical, economic and/or cultural tensions that lead to conflicts and wars.

At the same time, multiple decisions and regulations are being adopted by countries and companies to try to contain the ecological problems we are facing.

Technology, mainly the Internet and AI, is simultaneously reshaping the world. Indeed, in most regions, borders now have a more political and legal significance than a strictly social one. And despite all these upheavals that we are witnessing, the world remains global and international management is becoming more than ever the cornerstone of the positive development of companies, their performance, and therefore of wealth creation globally. In other words, we are talking here about one of the fundamental sources of improving the living conditions of human beings. It is with this in mind that a few examples mainly relating to issues of ethics and resilience, and therefore of constantly renewed adaptive capacity are presented here.

The concept of ecosystem is used, from the local to the international level, to analyze the notions of balance and resilience. The introductory research note of this dossier proposes a reflection on this central concept of ecosystem used by economists/managers on the one hand and by biologists/ecologists on the other. The study shows the confusion born from this double appropriation and the need to clarify the meaning of the concept when it is used by researchers.

The first article entitled “How does the method of measuring variables affect the relationship between internationalization and performance? A study on the automobile industry” focuses on measuring the relationship between two central concepts of international management: the degree of internationalization of companies and their performance. Given the disparity of the results obtained by researchers, Nadine Galy and Denis Lacoste explore the multiplicity of indicators used to measure these two dimensions. Their case study focused on the automobile sector leads them to reconsider the overly comprehensive degree of internationalization/performance relationship and highlights the need to develop research towards the analysis of the links between the different forms of internationalization and the different facets of performance.

In the second article, Elise Goiseau and Wafa Ben Khaled look at the case of GPSFs (Global Professional Service Firms) in which many expatriates work who benefit from different experiences, particularly in terms of professional practices, and try to influence and modify those existing in their company. Their research is conducted in the Big Four and is entitled: “Professional services companies, global organizations? Study of negotiated work practices through the case of expatriation within the Big Four”. It sheds new light on global/local conflicts by showing that if expatriates agree on the existence of differences in existing practices, they do not have the same perception of them, nor do they have the same approach to negotiating them. Their study highlights the non-homogeneity of work practices in GPSFs, as well as the existence of power relations between GPRFs of different nationalities.

The third article written by Anastasia Sartorius and entitled “The role of headquarters in managing multiple network interdependencies in the context of international sales activities” studies the role of headquarters in the multiple interdependencies existing in and between the networks of various B2B commercial activities with their customers. Contrary to popular belief, the role of the general staff is not diminished by the existence of networks, which on the contrary assume various roles at the level of the multiple interdependencies existing between these networks. The aim of the general staff is to manage to organize/coordinate the various interorganizational relationships; to enable the subunits of the multinational company to better integrate its activities, and finally to manage the emerging conflicts between agents during multiple collaborations between subsidiaries.

The fourth article written by Arthur Nguyen entitled: “The co-evolution of EMNEs and market actors’ institutional works in emerging economies: The case of Korean Music Agencies in Vietnam” questions how emerging economy multinationals shape local markets in emerging economies. This example shows how Korean music agencies and Vietnamese market players, evolving in the same dynamic, have, thanks to their institutional work, succeeded in shaping a type of music: K-pop. The author insists on the existence of two different processes depending on the degree of specialization of the type of music concerned. It appears that the higher this degree, the more elaborate the cultural process is, moving from cultural “bricolage” to true cultural engineering.

While the five articles presented here all go in the direction of analyzing the resilience of international management players, their approaches differ widely. All are committed to improving managerial processes in light of new challenges. Some specify commonly used concepts but with different visions (ecosystems), others in the same spirit analyze basic concepts in international management such as the degree of internationalization and performance and highlight the need to reconsider the question of their relationship to make it meaningful; others highlight how work practices differ between various subsidiaries of international groups, and how power relations can be established between nationalities. A key role of the general staff of multinationals is is associated to difficult relational questions between networks that need to be organized; and the final work shows how multinationals from emerging economies shape their development of local markets through in-depth institutional work.

To conclude, these 5 articles show the diversity and richness of research themes in international management. They were selected among the best papers of the Atlas AFMI 2022 conference in Nice. The guest editors warmly thank the researchers and reviewers who have done a considerable amount of work to bring these papers to publication in this volume of Management International. They are, in alphabetical order: Hanane Beddi, Ludvine Chalencon, Jean-François Chanlat, Eric Davoine, Noémie Dominguez, J Nathalie. Fabbe-Costes, Jean Marc Ferrandi, Lamia Jaidane-Mazigh, Jacques Jaussaud, Ulrike Mayrhofer, Sophie Nivoix, Viegas Pires, Salomée Ruel, Laurence Saglietto, Jan Schaaper, Marc Valax, Adel ben Youssef.