The Selection Committee for the JIBS Decade Award was pleased to recommend the presentation of the 2023 JIBS Decade Award to Anthony Goerzen (Queen's University, Canada), Christian Geisler Asmussen (Copenhagen Business School, Denmark) and Bo Bernhard Nielsen (University of Sydney, Australia) for their 2013 article “Global cities and multinational enterprise location strategy” (JIBS, 44.5: 427–450).

The award, sponsored by Palgrave Macmillan, is designed to recognize the most influential paper published in the Journal of International Business Studies 10 years prior and is presented at the annual AIB conference. In order to be considered for the JIBS Decade Award, an article must be one of the five most cited articles published in JIBS for the year being considered. This year’s Selection Committee members were Kaz Asakawa (Keio University, Japan), Jeremy Clegg (University of Leeds, UK), Catherine Welch (Trinity College Dublin, Republic of Ireland), and Rosalie L. Tung (Simon Fraser University, Canada; Committee Chair and JIBS Editor-in-Chief).

In recommending the award-winning article, the Committee noted that, “This article is among the most cited articles published in JIBS in 2013.” It stands out for several other reasons as well.

“First, Goerzen, Asmussen, and Nielsen’s study of the importance of global cities to MNEs’ choice of locations was both topical and novel. Their study drew upon Kaigai Shinshutsu Kigyo Soran, a database on Japanese MNEs and their overseas subsidiaries around the world, to support their reasoning that ‘global connectedness, cosmopolitanism, and abundance of advanced producer services’ assist MNEs in overcoming the liability of foreignness. The paper broke new ground by going beyond the country or even regional level in the study of location choices. By examining a variety of determinants of an MNE’s propensity to locate its foreign subsidiaries inside or outside a global city, it highlights the complexity of MNE location decisions and draws attention to the need for IB scholars to take a broader and more inclusive approach to the understanding of MNE operations/phenomena and their executives’ decision-making processes.”

“Second, this study is a well-executed piece of empirical research that establishes a macro (sub-national-level) and micro (firm-level) link that crosses and integrates multiple disciplines such as economic geography and business strategy. It used multi-level modeling in order to account for the nested nature of subsidiaries within MNEs. This methodological contribution is worth noting.”

“Third, even though developments since the publication of the paper in 2013 may render a very different roster of world cities in 2023 and beyond, the attention drawn to the characteristics of ‘global connectedness, cosmopolitanism, and abundance of advanced producer services’ challenges us to rethink about the future of global cities. Instead of global cities, will there be hubs based on geographic regions and/or ideological leanings, such as the Washington consensus vis-à-vis the Bei**g consensus? If so, what are the characteristics of these global cities, regional hubs and/or ideological hubs? This can pave the way for new directions in research on the global economy and how MNEs adapt to these new realities.”

“Fourth, this study’s key findings can foster valuable, thought-provoking discussion and debate by scholars, business executives, and students. As an assigned reading for students, it can lead to important classroom discussion across a range of curricula, thereby advancing education on a topic of enduring relevance to people around the world. The article also provides useful insights for business executives in their decision-making.”

“The Committee recognizes that the findings of this study will need to be updated and re-evaluated against the current realities of, first, digitalization that has given new meaning to the measure and operationalization of interconnectedness; and second, geopolitical tensions and global disruptions that may have contributed to the bifurcation of the global economy along ideological lines and techno-nationalism. The former development, digitalization, and its impact on MNEs, is an important one and explains for the addition of ‘Industry 4.0’ as a new sub-domain by the current JIBS editorial team. The new reality of bifurcation challenges a fundamental assumption behind the original concept of global cities, namely the continued liberalization of the world economy to bring about a ‘world that is flat’, to paraphrase Thomas L. Friedman. Discussions around global disruptions and their implications for international business align well with the theme of the Academy of International Business 2023 conference, ‘International Business Resilience under Global Disruptions’”.

JIBS Editor-in-Chief Rosalie L. Tung, and the publisher’s representative, Mr. Nicholas Philipson, formally presented the Decade Award during the 2023 AIB Annual Meeting in Warsaw, Poland. Professors Anthony Goerzen, Christian Geisler Asmussen and Bo Bernhard Nielsen provided a retrospective of their award-winning paper in the light of changes and developments that have taken place in the international business context in the past decade. Invited discussants Kaz Asakawa (Keio University, Japan), Jeremy Clegg (University of Leeds, UK) and C. Cindy Fan (University of California, Los Angeles, USA) commented on the Goerzen et al. (2013) paper as well as ideas expressed in their retrospective. Collectively, they discussed how scholarship related to global cities has progressed and where it could go next.

What follows in this issue are the authors’ written Retrospective, together with the discussants’ Commentaries (hereafter referred to as Collection), based on that AIB Annual Meeting session. For the original 2013 article (Goerzen et al., 2024), please visit www.jibs.net, where it is free to view, along with all other past Decade Award winners.

It is worthwhile to take stock and expand on some of the ideas/issues advanced in this Collection to relate to the vision and aspirations of JIBS under the current editorial team. These ideas/issues are several-fold: One, a return to the cross- and multi-disciplinary roots of IB to capture the true complexity of dynamics to advance our understanding of phenomena that cross international boundaries; two, an increased attention to “alternative” units of analysis besides the journal’s traditional focus on nation state and the firm levels of analysis; three, the need to study the implications of bifurcation/trifurcation of the world economy for connectivity, an important attribute of global cities; four, due consideration of how immigration and emigration, whether voluntary or forced, can impact the operations and functionings of MNEs; and five, due attention to the growing incidence of remote work and its implications for international business operations and functionings. Each of these issues is discussed briefly below.

Cross- and multi-disciplinary roots of IB

Given the complex and multiplex dynamics that underlie the operations of firms and decision-making across international boundaries, the field of IB/IM, by nature, has to be cross- and multi-disciplinary in order to adequately capture the phenomena under investigation. The current editorial team has introduced two new sub-domains to complement the six existing themes of the journal. The two new sub-domains are Industry 4.0 and Global sustainability.

The Retrospective (Goerzen et al., 2024) reaffirmed that the Internet of Things (IoT), under the Industry 4.0 sub-domain, will become “the building block for the next generation of smart cities”. The Kaz and Clegg commentary delved further into smart cities and included them in their Figure 1 entitled, “multifaceted nature of global cities”. Similar to the current debate on the advantages and disadvantages of generative AI, while there are many benefits to the development of smart cities, there can also be downsides associated with them. The potential positive benefits include the more efficient delivery of public services, creation of safer communities, provision of improved transportation services, and attraction of new business/economic opportunities. The greatest potential downside includes mass surveillance that may contribute to the dystopian society envisioned by George Orwell in his novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. As in the case of generative AI, formal and informal, explicit and implicit guardrails must be implemented to mitigate possible abuses (such as invasion of privacy) that can arise from unfettered surveillance, both domestic and international. Unfortunately, policies lag behind these rapid technological developments. To date, while there is no international agreement that governs global surveillance (Thornhill, 2023), the fact that close to 30 countries signed onto the Bletchley Declaration at the AI Safety Summit in early November 2023 highlights the importance that countries from both the Global North and Global South attach to this issue.

The Retrospective also addresses the need for global sustainability of “cities and communities”, in line with UNSDG Goal 11’s to “make cities, human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” (UNSDG Goals, undated). Global sustainability is the other new sub-domain of JIBS. While the journal seeks to publish research in the eight sub-domains, to highlight the multi- and inter-disciplinary nature of IB, high-quality research that can bring forth the intersectionality of two or more sub-domains is particularly welcome. It is important to emphasize that each sub-domain is not intended to exist in isolation. Take, for example, the Industry 4.0 sub-domain. As noted above, AI is an important aspect addressed by this sub-domain. However, given the fact that AI affects virtually all aspects of societal and organizational functioning, a comprehensive understanding of this sub-domain cannot be researched in the context of one sub-domain only. As the Economist eloquently summed up the impact of AI, it is “everything, everywhere, all at once” (“The dawn of the omnistar”, November 9, 2023). Of course, this caption also happened to be the title of the movie that won the 2023 Academy Award for Best Picture. As such, in order to truly capture and study AI’s role and its impact on IB/IM, it is virtually impossible to address this development solely from the perspective of one of the eight sub-domains.

The same applies to the Global Sustainability sub-domain. Franklin Allen, the recipient of the 2023 AIB Fellows’ Eminent Scholar Award, spoke on “International Business and Climate Change”. He argued that since MNEs have been a major contributor to carbon emissions, “they can be an important part of the solution” as they possess “ unique features” including “realign(ing) their incentives with those of the collective and engag(ing) their potential to play in decarbonizing the economy”.

The Collection of papers associated with the 2023 JIBS Decade Award reflects this cross- and multi-disciplinary approach. Since Goerzen et al.’s (2013) paper was inspired by the economic geography literature, the addition of an economic geographer’s lens, that of Fan’s (2024, this issue), supports the reality that theoretical advances can be made in international business through the adoption of an inter-disciplinary perspective.

The action or inaction on climate change highlights another important issue that divides the “have” versus the “have-not” countries. On November 17, 2023, planet Earth reached an ominous milestone where global temperatures rose by over two degrees Celsius, thereby subjecting an estimated 7.3 billion people worldwide to “dangerous levels of extreme heat” (Dance, 2023). Unfortunately, many who are most affected by extreme heat reside in the Global South countries. Mohamed Adnow (2020), the founder and director of a think tank, Power Shift Africa, based in Nairobi, Kenya, exposed the inequities and hypocrisy of this problem in a paper in Foreign Affairs entitled, “The climate debt: What the west owes the rest”. He drew attention to the plight of the Global South that has to “bear the brunt of … consequences” stemming from emissions in the Global North. He cited the following statistics to support his assertions: “The average American is responsible for the emission of as much carbon dioxide per year as are 581 Burundians, 51 Mozambicans … or 35 Bangladeshis”. The two latter countries have experienced devastating typhoons and erratic weather patterns in recent years. Further, Adnow pointed to a 2018 study by the National Academy of Sciences “that in most low-income countries, higher temperatures are more than 90% likely to have curbed economic output. In sub-Saharan Africa, climate change has reduced the per-capita GDPs of Burkina Faso, Niger, and Sudan by more than 20%”. Fan’s commentary (2024, this issue) also drew attention to the needs to, first, recognize inequities and, second, to redress them. After all, to “reduce inequality within and among countries” is the 10th Goal of the UNSDG. JIBS welcomes submissions that have societal impact, reducing inequalities being one of them.

Alternative units of analysis

Traditionally, the bulk of papers that appear in JIBS have used the country and firm levels of analysis. From time to time, some papers focus on the behavioral/individual level of analysis although the findings of these studies are typically discussed in the context of their implications for the operations of MNEs and managerial decision-making. As noted in the second rationale for the selection of the 2013 winning paper, the Committee recognized the novelty and value of using cities as the unit of analysis to enable “multi-level modeling”.

The Kaz and Clegg Commentary (2024, this issue) assert that global cities are “multifaceted” in nature. Besides global cities, there are megacities (cities with over 10 million people) and agglomerations of contiguous cities where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, such as the Greater Bay Area (GBA) in southern China. Fan’s commentary (2024, this issue) has dubbed the latter phenomenon as the “super mega city-region”. The GBA consists of nine municipalities, including Hong Kong, Macau, Shenzhen (known as China’s Silicon Valley and home of MNEs such as Huawei, Tencent, ZTE, DJI, China Merchant Bank, and others), with a combined population of over 86 million people and a 2022 GDP of RMB13 trillion (USD1.7 trillion). To speed intercity connectivity, a 55-kilometer (37-mile) Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge was completed in October 2018 to reduce travel time from Hong Kong to Zhuhai to 40 minutes by car.

The GBA (GBA, undated) bears the distinct properties that Goerzen et al. (2013) ascribed to global cities – “interconnectedness”, cosmopolitanism, and abundant “advanced producer services” – that integrate the financial strength, innovative/manufacturing capabilities, and human resources of the Pearl River Delta region plus Hong Kong. The Pearl River Delta region has served as the engine of China’s economic growth in the past several decades. Aside from the presence of physical infrastructure that connects municipalities in the region, data storage and transfers aligned with the rules and mechanisms implemented in Hong Kong and Macau for such transfers, complement and facilitate the integration of industrial supply chain and services in the region. This super-connected geographic area has attracted the attention of cash-rich countries, such as Saudi Arabia, as a “go-to destination for foreign investors” (Wong & He, 2023).

The Belt Road Initiative (BRI) represents yet another step-up from “super mega city-region”. The BRI is a colossal land and maritime infrastructure project that includes six economic corridors that link multiple continents with the stated purpose of achieving “policy, infrastructure, trade, financial, and people-to-people connectivity” (OECD, 2018, p. 4). As noted in the Retrospective, the focus of geography literatures has been on “infrastructure and connectivity”. Even though the BRI has been met with skepticism by some and the level of financial commitment has been scaled back due to the recent slowdown of the Chinese economy, supra-national infrastructure projects that connect countries and continents continue to hold their appeal (Zhou, Williamson, & Tung, 2021). The Build Back Better World (B3W) Initiative announced at the 2021 G7 Summit is the Global North’s response to China’s BRI. The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) (IMEC, 2023), a planned infrastructure project to connect India, the Middle East and Europe, is part of the B3W Initiative.

The attention to alternative units of analysis by Goerzen et al. (2013) has raised the relevance and suitability of “super mega city-regions” and, possibly, economic corridors as units of analysis in the study of IB phenomena. Of course, adjustments in methodology and data collection have to be made to take into consideration these different levels of analysis. The BRI can be studied from the perspectives of the motivations and dynamics of foreign direct investment (FDI), both inward and outward; home–host government interactions (see, for example, Lewin & Witt, 2022; Li, van Assche, Fu, Li, & Qian, 2022); and geopolitical rivalry particularly in the light of the Memorandum of Understanding pertaining to IMEC.

Economic corridors can also provide fertile ground for studying the functionings of multicultural teams (MCTs), and how greater collaboration can contribute to a country’s soft power. Soft power, the concept coined by Joseph Nye (1990:162–164), represents an alternative to hard or military power since the latter option is becoming “more difficult to apply”. Soft power is “co-optive” and “occurs when one country gets other countries to want what it wants”. While China’s hard power is closely catching up to that of the US, its soft power is still lagging, particularly among the Global North countries. A greater understanding of people-to-people exchanges in countries along the economic corridors can shed insights on the antecedents and outcomes of soft power. As Curtis and Klaus (2023) noted, “(t)hroughout history, great powers have used cities not only as nodes of commercial and religious connection but as sites for the real and symbolic projection of power”. The BRI, envisioned as a “reincarnation of the ancient and medieval Silk Roads”, could “generate a new kind of transnational market” that has the potential for “transforming the connective tissue of the global economy”. Digitalization and sustainability are key components of urban planning in the transformation of the regions within the BRI. These developments led Curtis and Klaus (2023) to conclude that the “intended scope of the BRI suggests that China’s experiments in rapid urban growth and connectivity could eventually form the basis for a successor to the global city… (T)he BRI .. offers tantalizing glimpses of a world that could better engage with intractable problems such as climate change”. Studies of the nature suggested by Curtis and Klaus (2023) involve perspectives from multiple disciplines, such as political science, climatology, IT, IB, international management (IM), and organizational behavior.

While much has been written on MCTs in JIBS and elsewhere, it is important to note that not all MCTs are created equal. Since the BRI extends into Africa and the Middle East, hitherto less studied geographic regions of the world and hence under-represented in JIBS publications, it is important to avoid falling into the trap that all countries in a given region are homogeneous. Faloyin (2022) reminds us that “Africa is not a country”. Just as there are many differences among East Asian countries, there are equally important variations among the many countries that make up the African continent. Using the case of Tanzania, Carr, Rugimbana, Walkom and Bolitho (2001) have borrowed the concept of “inverse resonance” from applied mechanics to explain how people from neighboring countries, while similar yet not identical, can create more tensions and challenges than team members who are dissimilar. My own research has shown that the principle of inverse resonance has relevance to expatriate assignments from Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea to China and vice-versa. A similar situation most likely holds for India as well as South Asians differ along many fault lines, such as religion, language, caste/class, and so on.

Furthermore, research has shown that host country nationals may be less receptive to working for superiors from emerging markets, albeit China is now the second largest economy in the world. According to Leung and Morris (2015:1045), bosses from emerging markets are viewed as “low in expert power”. In general, countries that are low in soft power encounter more challenges in recruiting the best and brightest local talents to work for them (see Luo & Tung, 2018, for example).

Bifurcation/trifurcation

As noted in the citation for the award, until the mid-2010s, Thomas Friedman’s assertion that the “world is flat” held sway. Since then, the headwinds against unfettered globalization have gathered momentum. At the risk of over-simplification, a confluence of events – such as changes in leadership and policies of major trading countries, techno-nationalism, coupled with global supply chain disruptions during the pandemic that highlighted the problems associated with over-reliance on foreign supplies of essential items – has contributed to slowbalization, deglobalization, decoupling, derisking, the rise of technonationalism (Luo, 2022), and a resurgence of industrial policies. Bifurcation can disrupt global connectivity, an attribute ascribed to global cities by Goerzen et al. (2013).

Much has been written on decoupling and deglobalization and their implications for IB research. In discussing the implications of the Tech Cold War, Tung, Zander and Fang (2023) draw attention to non-market forces where “government-imposed export controls and associated sanctions … are … invoked more frequently in the name of national security, are more far-reaching, and are also enforced with greater intensity”. The revival of industrial policies and focus on technonationalism highlight the role of national governments.

In a thought-provoking piece, Ian Bremmer (2021), President of the Eurasia Group, raises the specter of the “independent geopolitical influence” that Big Tech has as they “do not operate or wield power exclusively in physical space. They have created a new dimension in geopolitics – digital space – over which they exercise primary influence. People are increasingly living out their lives in this vast territory, which governments do not and cannot fully control”. Given the pervasiveness of Big Tech and the rapid development and deployment of AI, the long-held assumption of “states (as) … the primary actors in global affairs” may have to be revised. Bremmer pointed to how Big Tech is “transforming human relationships … (as) people increasingly connect with one another through algorithms”. He concluded by stating that: “The next decade will test what happens as the politics of digital space and physical space converge”. Aside from the relevance of these developments to global cities where digital space meets physical space, the scenarios posited by Bremmer have tremendous implications for the study and understanding of institutional environments and the functionings of MCT, to cite two examples only, as they relate to IB.

Other implications of decoupling for IB research include studying the dynamics and consequences of multipolarization or trifurcation. The third branch to a trifurcated world is the Global South. Many countries in the Global South have refrained from choosing sides, i.e., “steer clear of great-power rivalries” and instead picking and choosing what best suits their own national interests. This “a la carte” diplomacy (Russell, 2023), combined with the rising economic power of countries outside of G-7 as evidenced by the expansion of the BRICS bloc, have increased the bargaining clout of each member country vis-à-vis the US and China. At the 2023 BRICS summit, 22 countries applied to join this bloc. If all prospective applicants were admitted, collectively, the bloc would account for 45% of the world’s GDP, albeit divisions remain among member countries.

As noted earlier, bifurcation/trifurcation has important implications for connectivity and, by extension, global cities. The free flow of people, capital, and ideas is essential to this connectivity (Kearney, 2022). The aforementioned new economic realities and geopolitical order challenge us to re-examine and rethink IB theories, many of which are predicated on the assumptions of unfettered globalization.

Returning to the link between sustainability and global cities addressed in the Retrospective as well as the Kaz and Clegg Commentary, while some suggest that global trade contributes to climate change as transcontinental shipment of goods does add to greenhouse gas emission (GHG), several scientific studies present evidence to the contrary. Fuchs et al. (2019) report that when China turned to Brazil for soybean imports in retaliation to US tariffs imposed in 2018, it resulted in rapid rainforest deforestation as Brazil made room for soybean acreage. In late 2023, a report by the University of Zurich (Le Moigne, 2023:3) went a step further by asserting that “better” not “less trade” can have a positive impact on GHG through application of David Ricardo’s law of comparative advantage. Using the economic gains from trade through specialization argument, Le Moigne (2023) asserted that “there are environmental gains from trade if countries specialize in what they are relatively green at – that is, according to their environmental comparative advantage”. To be effective, however, the report argued that the law of comparative advantage has to be combined with a global uniform carbon tax. Yet another study, based on four scenarios of reconfiguring global supply chains away from China as part of a derisking strategy, concluded that reallocation would result in “large shifts of embodied emission to other regions”, that represents “an increase of 1.2 to 5.7%” over 2017 levels” (Yuan et al. 2022). In a similar vein, Helveston, He and Davidson’s (2022) study points to the cost saving (an estimated 20–25% reduction) associated with the continuation of existing global solar photovoltaic supply chains centered around China.

In short, while countries seek to prioritize national security concerns through de-risking, reshoring, reconfiguration of global trade and so on, the benefits have to be balanced against the costs associated with negative impact on climate changes and costs to consumers (Farrell & Newman, 2023). How these concerns influence the operations of MNEs and managerial decisions merit research attention. Research of this nature could shed new insights on the “liability of unsustainability” (LoU) raised in the Goerzen et al. Retrospective.

Immigration and emigration

As noted earlier, Goerzen et al. (2013) paper highlighted connectivity, cosmopolitanism, and abundance of advanced producer services as defining attributes of global cities. Since immigration and emigration capture the essence of these three important properties, they merit further research attention.

2022 witnessed a 26% increase in permanent-type migration to OECD countries over the preceding year and foreign-born people account for 10.6% of their combined populations (OECD, 2023). With overall aging of the population in most OECD countries, these trends will likely continue. Furthermore, the war for talent will intensify in industries/sectors that are critical to a nation’s competitive advantage, such as AI and other STEM-related fields (Chand & Tung, 2019). Traditionally, the flow of immigration and emigration were construed as permanent and/or unidirectional. Saxenian (2005) has coined the term “brain circulation” to refer to the realities that since many high-tech talent in Silicon Valley are foreign-born (China and India, in particular), to capitalize on the opportunities and developments in their respective countries of origin (COO), there is a tendency for them to establish dual beachheads of business in their COO as well as their country of residency (COR).

Delving further into the potential role that members of diasporas can play in encouraging bilateral trade flows between COO and COR, Chand and Tung (2014) found that there was a nuanced relationship between Bicultural identity integration (BII), a construct introduced and operationalized by Benet-Martinez and Harritatos (2005), and bilateral trade. BII measures the way biculturals manage the opposing identities posed by their COO and COR, among other things. In their study, Chand and Tung (2014:763) found that the interaction of “different components of bicultural identity, cultural distance and cultural conflict” did have “a significant impact on economic engagement”. Furthermore, “these effects are complex and multifaceted and are mediated by the diaspora’s social networks in both the COR and COO”. In other words, since not all immigrants are the same, there needs to be a more comprehensive understanding of how BII, a micro-level construct, can shape and influence macro-level outcomes.

Aside from studying the relationship between diasporic members and international trade, a better understanding of their BII over time merits research attention. In their interviews with 12 members of the African diaspora worldwide, Chambers et al. (2023) showed how the complex relationship “between Black people on and off the continent of Africa” has evolved over time, albeit the psychological construct of BII was not used. Chambers et al. (2023) asserted that for a long time, the identity of many Black people were “bound up in a painful history of slavery, separation and, at times, suspicion” as epitomized in Malcolm X’s 1964 speech in Ghana: “I don’t feel that I am a visitor in Ghana or in any part of Africa. I feel that I am at home. I’ve been away for 400 years, but not of my own volition, not of my own will”. Chambers et al. (2023) contrasted this with the evolving identity of the younger generation of African diasporic members with a sample quote from Zhong Feifei: “Often the world tells biracial kids that our existence is a 50–50 thing – that you can only ever be less than a whole or not enough. But I feel 100% Congolese and 100% Chinese”. Zhong Feifei is a biracial Congolese Chinese singer/model with 1.6 million followers in her social media accounts. She has lived in China, Congo and the US where she studied at Boston University and graduated with a global security studies master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University. Zhong Feifei, who now resides in China, represents the new breed of cosmopolitans who play an important role in connecting disparate regions of the world together, and in the process, highlight the fluidity of bicultural identity as well as the “fluidity of physical boundaries” that Fan (2024, this issue) alluded to in her Commentary. This fluidity contributes to the strengths and dynamism of global cities. An estimated one-half million African migrants now reside in China while several million Chinese now live in various parts of Africa.

Biracial people and diasporic members contribute, in part at least, to the fluidity of, one, bicultural identity and, two, physical space. The growth in the biracial population worldwide as well as the evolving BII of diasporic members highlight the need for research that is inter-disciplinary in nature and which involves cross-levels of analysis to capture the complexity of dynamics under investigation. As pointed out in the Retrospective, interdisciplinary research that spans multiple levels of analysis can be challenging as it requires triangulation among the various perspectives.

While immigrants can play an important role in addressing the overall aging in many industrialized countries and declining replacement rates in these countries, immigrants have sometimes been vilified as taking jobs away from local-borns. Worse yet, in some cases, immigration has been used as part of the narrative in the “great replacement” conspiracy theory that “invoke rhetoric around a deliberate attempt to make Whites extinct and replace them with non-White immigrants” (Obaidi, Kunst, Ozer, & Kimel, 2022:1675).

In her Commentary, Fan (2024, this issue) raises the very poignant question on the very definition of “foreignness” in the context of “geopolitical realities of the 2020s … Do Asian Americans have to address LOF without even going abroad?”. The growing incidence of hate crimes perpetuated on those who are non-white, can be explained in part at least, by the concepts/constructs of “othering” (Brons, 2015) and the notion that Asian Americans are the “perpetual foreigner” (Huynh, Devos, & Smalarz, 2011). These socio-psychological research have profound implications for research on identity, psychological adjustment, and fault lines that help explain/predict behavior and interactions that are important in the IB/IM literature. If the liability of foreignness (LOF), a central thesis in Goerzen et al.’s analysis of global cities, is “a function of evolving and alternative contexts”, as Fan hinted, then the LOF construct that has informed many aspects of the IB literature, has to be re-examined and expanded upon to consider the interplay between local/foreign and culturally similar/dissimilar countries.

Growing incidence of remote work

A mid-2023 Survey on Working Arrangements and Attitudes found that remote work accounts for 28% of “paid workdays” in the US. This compares to 31% of workers on a worldwide basis (Kearney’s 2023 Global Cities Report). Furthermore, these trends are projected to increase in the future (Barrero et al., 2023). Their report went on to show that remote work is cost efficient (i.e., profitable) as such arrangements can reduce overhead and boost productivity. Research also suggests that remote and hybrid work arrangements can lower carbon footprint by 54% and 11–29%, respectively (Tao & associates, 2023).

Aside from a reduction in carbon footprint, the growing incidence of remote work has important implications for global cities, such as the “hollowing of … once-vibrant downtowns” thereby raising the specter of “urban doom loops”. The exit of “young white middle- and upper-class” city dwellers from urban areas could result in a deterioration of the downtown core areas (Edsall, 2022). Gupta et al., (2023) quantified the loss in revenues to these once-vibrant downtowns as a “$475.4 billion value destruction” due to high vacancies and a general downward trend in rents of commercial/office property.

Remote work has been accompanied by a rise in virtual meetings and virtual assignments. While virtual meetings and assignments can result in corporate savings and reduce carbon footprint, whether virtual meetings can facilitate or hinder the operations and functionings of MCT, conflict resolution and brainstorming of creative ideas/solutions to problems remain to be seen. These present exciting opportunities for future research.

The ability to work remotely from anywhere in the world so long as there is access to good and reliable internet has contributed, in part at least to the rise of zoom towns (Molino, undated) and digital nomadism. According to De los Rios Hernández (2023), there has been a four-fold increase in digital nomads from the US from 2020 to 2023 with an estimated 35 million people worldwide. Digital nomads tend to be young (average age of 32) and popular among those who work in jobs/sectors that allow for such work arrangements, such as IT, e-commerce, and telehealth. Benefits include the opportunity to live in one’s COO or safe yet idyllic locations that are lower in cost of living. Living away from home can also help broaden one’s global mindset, similar to that associated with expatriate assignments. However, there are also challenges to digital nomadism including the possible lack of language proficiency in culturally distant countries, immigration/work permit requirements in target countries, and implications for taxation and labor laws (Hooper & Benton, 2022).

Many destination countries welcome digital nomads for much of the same reasons as they do inward FDI, albeit the benefits associated with the former may be less than that of the latter. Benefits include a boost to the local economy related to tax revenue, the provision of housing, goods, and services to the digital nomads that, in turn, can further attract other digital nomads to relocate. As with FDI, there are costs associated with such relocations. These include increase in costs of housing, goods, and services to locals due to supply–demand reasons created by the influx of digital nomads. According to a 2020 World Bank report (Hooper & Benton, 2022), while one in three jobs in high-income countries could be done remotely, only one in 26 jobs is amenable to this new type of work arrangement in low-income countries, thereby contributing, once again, to the “Matthew effect” alluded to in the Retrospective.

The hollowing of downtown cores, the emergence of zoom towns, the prevalence of digitalization, and the rising incidence of digital nomadism all point to the need to recontextualize the definition and meaning of location, space and place, the theme of the 2013 Special Issue, “The multinational in geographic space” that featured the Goerzen et al. paper. Digitalization necessitates the redefinition of space to go beyond the traditional concept of “geographic space” (i.e., physical) to include digital space.

Rather surprisingly, remote work has contributed, in part at least, to a change in the long-standing work culture of the “Japanese salaryman”, a term used to characterize the system of lifetime employment of career staff in large Japanese companies. As salarymen “were being forced to rapidly adapt to work-from-home pandemic norms, remote meetings, hierarchy disruption and the sudden demise of the presenteeism that once firmly policed their work culture”, it made them re-examine the meaning of work. Some have abandoned the traditional norm of “salarymen” and ventured to join start-ups. According to the Japan Venture Capital Association, as of end 2021, “more than a fifth of job transitions from large companies” fell into this category. This trend is expected to reach 25% (Lewis, 2023). This trend does not appear to be unique to Japan alone as the pandemic and the growing prevalence of digitalization, among other things, have given rise to the “great resignation” as employees increasingly question the meaning of work and work-life balance issues. These developments will bring about fundamental changes to the demographics and culture of global cities.

Conclusion

In summary, the Collection on global cities has challenged us, as IB scholars and researchers, to fundamentally rethink many of the existing theories in our field as they are based on assumptions that need to be revisited in the light of the five trends/developments that I have alluded to here. Collectively, these developments call for a more inclusive approach in terms of incorporating perspectives from other disciplines and research methodologies. Inclusion also necessitates the need to go beyond the geographic regions that have traditionally been the focus of attention of IB scholars. Fan (2024, this issue) noted the need to understand and study “global city-regions and alternative contexts beyond the Global North, contexts that have traditionally been peripheralized in globalization, global cities and urbanization research but are key to the future of pertinent theories”.

This widening of the lens can contribute to new insights to refine and further develop IB theory. As the 2013 winning paper has shown, generativity can be richly rewarded. Besides novelty and originality, the current editorial team uses generativity as an important criterion to assess the merit of submissions to JIBS. Generativity refers to the ability of the paper under consideration to stimulate and encourage further research on the topic. The broadening of perspectives through a more inclusive approach is also in accordance with reality. As Britton (2021) projected, “a key feature of our long-term forecasts is the rise of urban economic `powerhouses’, particularly in Asia… By 2040, an additional 47 cities will become powerhouses, the majority located in Asia”. This represents a marked departure from the list of global cities included in the Goerzen et al. winning paper.