CALL FOR PAPERS
Special Issue of the Journal of International Business Studies
MULTILEVEL EMPIRICAL RESEARCH IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
Special Issue Editors
. Jean-Luc Arregle, University of Luxembourg,
jean-luc.arregle@uni.lu
. Shige Makino, Chinese University of Hong Kong,
makino@baf.msmail.cuhk.edu.hk
. Xavier Martin, Tilburg University,
x.martin@uvt.nl
. Mark F. Peterson, Florida Atlantic University,
mpeterso@fau.edu
. Anand Swaminathan, Emory University,
aswamin@emory.edu
Deadline for submission: April 30, 2010
Tentative publication date: Fall 2011 or Spring 2012
Introduction
This special issue seeks to promote and shape the future direction for
multilevel quantitative research in the field of international business.
Multilevel research investigates phenomena at several levels of analysis -
such as individuals, groups or subsidiaries, firms, networks or business
groups, industries or organization sets, and countries and regions - to
illuminate the multiple causes or consequences of behaviors at and across
these levels. This allows us to better analyze international business
actions within a comprehensive and integrative framework. Multilevel
conceptual models are common in international business, but empirical
research has usually tested them at a single level of analysis at a time.
The single-level approach creates several statistical problems including
spurious disaggregation (where researchers disaggregate higher-level data to
use a non-multilevel method), misestimated precision and ignorance of
intra-class correlation, which increase Type 1 and Type 2 errors. In fact,
multilevel methods have been almost ignored in quantitative international
business.
The purpose of this special issue is to narrow the gap between theoretical
models and quantitative methods in international business research. We want
to showcase high-quality multilevel quantitative studies, to encourage
international business researchers to apply these methods, and to underline
their value in studying new international business topics or renewing the
analysis of older ones. Hence, we seek original empirical contributions
using multilevel quantitative methods to extend international business
research. As a result, this special issue should set a definite standard of
the use of multilevel methods in high-quality IB research that uses such
data, and serve as a milestone for the development and spread of these
methods in IB.
Special Issue Theme
Multilevel research has gained visibility in management research since its
first formal introduction to management in an Academy of Management Review
special issue in 1999 (edited by Klein, Tosi and Cannella). It took years to
transfer this idea to research practice, leading to a special issue in the
Academy of Management Journal in 2007 (edited by Hitt, Beamish, Jackson and
Mathieu). Now, there is a consensus that this type of research improves our
understanding of managerial issues (see Hitt et al., 2007). This consensus
has been reinforced by the development of statistical software dedicated to
multilevel quantitative methods (including HLM, MLwIN, SuperMix, etc.) and
by the addition of multilevel capabilities in general software (such as
Stata). These developments have enlarged the types of multilevel methods
that are available to researchers and made their use easier.
Surprisingly, when we consider publications in international business, it is
manifest that, despite this consensus and the availability of these methods,
they have been largely ignored. For instance, there were no international
business articles in the AMJ special issue about multilevel research, and
less than 5% of the articles published in JIBS since 2002 use these methods.
In fact, most international business researchers keep testing multilevel
models with non-multilevel methods, limiting the development of more
elaborated research frameworks and questions (Arregle, Hebert, and Beamish,
2006). Beyond the crucial point of methodological validity, the use of
multilevel methods would also allow researchers to develop (and test) more
comprehensive models looking at level-1, level-2 or level-3 variables, and
their interactions.
This gap is even more striking if we consider the nature of international
business. As an integrative field, international business should cut across
macro/micro divisions. By definition international business researchers have
to deal in their frameworks with individuals, subsidiaries, MNEs, industries
and networks, countries and regions, etc. Therefore, by design,
international business researchers work very often on multilevel research
models. Hence, the objective of this special issue is to generalize the use
of multilevel quantitative methods and thereby narrow the gap between theory
and evidence to decisively bring multilevel quantitative methods into the
mainstream of international business research.
Topics for the Special Issue
This special issue will consider only multilevel quantitative papers. We
hope to include various forms of multilevel quantitative research that
advance our understanding of international business phenomena. All the
different academic disciplines belonging to international business (human
resources management, strategy, marketing, organizational behavior, finance,
etc.) are relevant. Although articles for the special issue must demonstrate
a good mastery of multilevel quantitative methods, they must first and
foremost contribute strongly to international business research. They should
address international business issues considering different levels of
analysis in a single theoretical and empirical model. Multilevel methods are
increasingly sophisticated, so we look for submissions that give theoretical
meaning to higher-level constructs and do not treat them as categorical
variables as was done in simpler moderated regression models. They encompass
a diversity of specifications such as linear and logistic regression,
Bernoulli, Poisson and negative binomial, tobit, survival analysis, latent
variable analysis etc., that can be used to address these questions. The
latest methods can consider 2 or 3 levels of analysis with nested or
cross-nested data structure, and accommodate network data.
For instance, and just as an illustration, MNEs often aggregate or amass
investments within a country or region to exploit their advantages, yet they
may also make arbitrage decisions by terminating a subsidiary in one country
and relocating to another country within the same or another region. These
aggregation and arbitrage decisions are taken for subsidiary or
country-level issues (e.g., number of existing subsidiaries in the country,
role and importance of a subsidiary, country's attractiveness or resources),
but also for region-level and corporate-level reasons (e.g., corporate-level
international strategy, portfolio of subsidiaries, international experience,
parent-firm's performance). Therefore, these decisions result of choices
made at different levels of analysis. Applying multilevel methods, it would
be possible to develop hypotheses about the role of variables at these
different levels of analysis in the same theoretical model and test them.
A second illustration is the broad range of multilevel issues in
cross-cultural research. These include issues in the construction of
measures of values developed at the level of individuals as compared to
measures developed at the level of societies or nations. For example, what
is the relationship between measures of commonly used constructs like
individualism or collectivism that are designed for individuals in
comparison to constructs with similar labels that are designed for nations
and similar large collectivities and institutions. Cross-cultural questions
also include problems of how to assess measure equivalence between different
levels and what equivalence at different levels implies. They also include
issues of the theoretical meaning and quantitative assessment of
relationships between cultural measures at the nation, region or other
higher level on the one hand and either levels of individual or group level
variables (e.g., societal cultural predicting leadership) or relationships
between individual or group level variables on the other (e.g., societal
culture predicting the relationship between leadership and performance).
We encourage prospective authors to address a variety of questions while
applying multilevel methods in an international or comparative context.
Submission Process
All manuscripts will be reviewed as a cohort for this special issue.
Manuscripts must be submitted in the window between April 7, 2010 and April
30, 2010, at
http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jibs. Please select the option
from the special issue drop-down menu on Manuscript Central that identifies
your paper as a submission for the "Multilevel Research & IB" special issue,
and include the words "Multilevel Research and IB Special Issue Submission"
on your title page. All submissions will go through the JIBS regular
double-blind review process and follow the same norms and processes. As
manuscripts are accepted for publication, they will be posted in the Advance
Online Publication system on
http://www.jibs.net.
For more information about this Call for Papers, please contact the Special
Issue Editors or the JIBS Managing Editor (
managing-editor@jibs.net).
-------------------
Anne Hoekman
Managing Editor, Journal of International Business Studies
JIBS Editorial Office
Academy of International Business
Michigan State University
Tel: +1-517-432-1452
Fax: +1-517-432-1009
E-mail:
managing-editor@jibs.net
Web: www.jibs.net