EIBA 2024 – “That’s interesting! Rethinking IB research for the next 50 years”

President of EIBA, Professor Rebecca Piekkari from the Aalto University together with Chair of EIBA, Lucia Piscitello, Politecnico di Milano, and Co-Chair of EIBA, Jonas Puck, WU, Vienna, welcome more than 600 senior and junior IB scholars and practitioners to the 50th Anniversary Conference of EIBA (eiba2024.eiba.org), taking place on 12–14 December 2024 at Aalto University’s Otaniemi campus in Espoo, Finland.

This year’s conference is jointly organized by Aalto University, LUT University, University of Oulu, and University of Turku. The conference theme “That’s Interesting! Rethinking IB Research for the Next 50 Years” invites participants to reflect on International Business’s past achievements and envision its future role in addressing global challenges through bold, interdisciplinary, and impactful research.

The backdrop of rising polarization, intensifying global grand challenges, and increasing geopolitical turbulence, this conference serves as a call to reimagine IB research, asking how we as a scholarly community can rethink existing knowledge in IB and push the boundaries of our field to make it more interesting and impactful for the future. 

Different pathways towards impactful IB research

The opening plenary of the conference will feature distinguished EIBA Fellows and speakers from both academia and business. This EIBA Fellows panel, chaired by Niina Nummela (University of Turku), will discuss different pathways towards impactful IB research. 

The panelists include Sari Baldauf (Chair of the Board of Directors at Nokia), Gabriel R.G. Benito (BI Norwegian Business School), Valentina De Marchi (ESADE Business School), and Jonathan Doh (Villanova University), together with commentary from Gary Gereffi (Duke University). Emeritus Professor of Sociology Gary Gereffi will be awarded the Distinguished Honorary Fellow award during the EIBA 50th Anniversary Gala Dinner in recognition of his impact and outstanding contributions to IB scholarship on global value chains and industrial policy. 

The conference delegates will be welcomed by Provost Kristiina Mäkelä, Aalto University, who graduated from the IB doctoral programme in 2006. She will be followed by Dean Timo Korkeamäki, School of Business. The welcome reception, also organized at the School of Business, will be sponsored by the City of Espoo. Henna Partanen, Vice Chair of the City Council, will greet the EIBA members on behalf of the City of Espoo. 

Conference sessions and book launches 

The EIBA 50th Anniversary Conference is packed with many sessions and presentations. The topics range from the success of IB as an academic field; debates on geopolitical risks; assessment of the environmental and societal impact of MNEs; various perspectives on the role of language in IB and management research during the next 50 years and the transformative role of AI in both IB research and teaching.

The conference programme features more than 400 papers, almost 130 posters and more than 30 panels. They will be presented in 25 interactive and 53 competitive sessions as well as two poster sessions. 

There will be three book launches during the EIBA conference in Finland. One of them is the book titled “The Helsinki Internationalization Process Model”, edited by Rebecca Piekkari and Catherine Welch. This book introduces the Helsinki Internationalization Process Model developed by Reijo Luostarinen to the EIBA community. Reijo Luostarinen was Professor at the Helsinki School of Economics (today Aalto University School of Business) and a founding member of EIBA. The session will be joined by Reijo’s former FIBO and doctoral students as well as his family members. We are proud to honour Reijo Luostarinen’s legacy at the EIBA 50^th Anniversary Conference.

Further information:
Please visit eiba2024.eiba.org or contact us at eiba2024@aalto.fi.