The Past Speaks

Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Business History

“International Business, Multi-Nationals, and the Nationality of the Company”

(latest submission by 15 January 2019, early submissions appreciated)

Business historians have stressed the international dimensions of business for a long time. Research on multinational enterprises (MNE) including the Free-Standing Company (FSC) belongs to the important contributions of Business History to the fields of international business, strategy, and management. The very question of “nationality” and which “nationality”, always present in the background, is rarely directly addressed even though national dimensions including politics evidently pervade international business activities. Corporate structure, corporate governance, and international branding are the most obvious but not the only fields in which “nationality” matters in international business. With Brexit, Trumpism and the re-nationalization of the political discourse within larger parts of Europe “nationality” that once was supposed to have lost its relevance in the global economy returns back…