Sustainable International Management: Research in Global Culture and Leadership Development

Dear Colleagues,

Organizations are giving increasing attention to corporate sustainability due to the regulative requests, expectation of stakeholders and the greater community, environmental pressure, and the benefits of achieving firms’ performance. With the intensification of globalization, sustainability no longer remains an issue inside each organization but becomes a collective concern that also involves its overseas suppliers and customers. As a multidimensional construct, it is worth investigating sustainability from different perspectives in this global cultural context. Prior studies have investigated sustainability from culture, human resource management, boardroom nationality, boardroom gender diversity, corporate identity, organizational capabilities, measurements to corporate sustainability performance, challenges in achieving sustainability, and so forth. 

The goal of the Special Issue is to expand the existing literature on these themes by offering new insights and future perspectives on how informal institutions (e.g., changing cultural values and cultural practices) and formal institutions (e.g., regulations, norms) may interplay together and affect corporate sustainability performance, as well as what the role is of leadership in shaping corporate sustainability policies and practices.  

We invite both conceptual and empirical research on the above themes. We are particularly interested in research combining multiple theoretical backgrounds and methodological approaches, as well as literature review or theory papers. Examples of relevant topics for this Special Issue include but are not limited to the following:

1. How do institutional practices (formal and informal) interplay with culture to affect the development of corporate sustainability practices?
2. How do developed economies of multinational companies transfer corporate sustainability practices across borders? What strategies do they use? What is the role of culture and leadership in this transfer? Does corporate sustainability performance vary from one country to another? Does the reverse transfer of corporate sustainability practices exist?
3. How do the emerging economies of multinational enterprises manage their corporate sustainability performance in their internationalization and localization processes, while considering long-term vs. short-term strategies and spatial dimensions (e.g., local vs global)?
4. How do go-global enterprises manage corporate sustainability?
5. How does COVID-19 affect firms’ corporate sustainability performance across borders?
6. How could companies use human resource management to balance the tensions that occur between economic, social, and environmental concerns in the global context?
7. What is the impact of crisis management on organizations’ sustainable practices in their overseas market?
8. What are the different perceptions of power/motivation/leadership across countries when implementing sustainable policies?
9. Which leadership style do companies foster the most to implement and develop corporate sustainability practices?

References:

1. Alshehhi, A.; Nobanee, H.; Khare, N. The impact of sustainability practices on corporate financial performance: Literature trends and future research potential. Sustainability 2018, 10, 494, doi:10.3390/su10020494.
2. Bansal, T.; Song, H.C. Similar But Not the Same: Differentiating Corporate Sustainability from Corporate Responsibility. Manag. Ann. 2017, 11, 105–149, doi:10.5465/annals.2015.0095.
3. Günter, K.S.; Brewster, C.J.; Collings, D.G.; Hajro, A. Enhancing the role of human resource management in corporate sustainability and social responsibility: A multi-stakeholder, multidimensional approach to HRM. Resour. Manag. Rev. 2020, 30, 100708, doi:10.1016/j.hrmr.2019.100708.
4. Hahn, T.; Figge, F.; Pinkse, J.; Preuss, L. A Paradox Perspective on Corporate Sustainability: Descriptive, Instrumental, and Normative Aspects. Bus. Ethics. 2018, 148, 235–248, doi:10.1007/s10551-017-3587-2.
5. Islam, M.S.; Tseng, M.L.; Karia, N. Assessment of corporate culture in sustainability performance using a hierarchical framework and interdependence relations. Clean. Prod. 2019, 217, 676–690. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.01.259.
6. Miska, M.; Szőcs, I.; Schiffinger, M. Culture’s effects on corporate sustainability practices: A multi-domain and multi-level view. World Bus. 2018, 53, 263–279, doi:10.1016/j.jwb.2017.12.001.

Dr. Alfredo Jiménez
Dr. Dorra Yahiaoui
Dr. Chi Zhang
Dr. Cuiling Jiang
Guest Editors

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