A new Zeitgeist for international business activity and scholarship

This paper suggests that International Business (IB) scholarship is at a watershed in its evolution. It sets out the reasons for this contention, and then goes on to trace the main changes in the physical and human environment which are fashioning the global activities of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs). The paper concludes by suggesting that IB scholars need to reconfigure their research methodologies if they are to successfully understand and explain the increasingly important role of institutions in determining the strategies of MNEs, and their impact on the locational competitiveness of countries.