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Introduction
International business (IB) has developed as an academic field since the 1960s. Initially inspired by economic thought, contemporary IB research is based on a number of approaches, including economic theory (Caves, 1971; Dunning, 1993), contingency theory (Doz et al., 1981; Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1989), cultural theories (Hofstede, 1991) and agency theory (Filatotchev and Wright, 2010; Mustapha, 2014). More recently, institutionalist and critical approaches have added new perspectives and debates to IB. However, an investigation of the impact of critical approaches to IB has been missing thus far. This is somewhat surprising given the growing number of non-mainstream IB contributions that have appeared since the start of the new millennium. In 2005, critical perspectives on international business (cpoib) – the only journal dedicated to the critical study of IB matters – was launched. Moreover, several contemporary IB compendiums recognize critical IB (Ietto-Gillies, 2005; Collison and Morgan, 2009; Dörrenbächer and Geppert, 2017). In addition, a number of mainstream IB authors have emphasized that IB needs to adopt a wider perspective, a perspective that might include critical IB.
In line with the basic assumption of critical management studies, critical IB is defined here as going beyond mainstream IB critiques of theory, methods and research findings by addressing the societal impact of international business activities and the uneven power structures in the world economy. This paper empirically examines critical IB research, the extent of its recognition in the mainstream IB literature and the direction it should take in the future. Based on a comprehensive citation analysis of more than 250 academic articles published in cpoib between 2005 and 2017, this article argues that mainstream IB research has only marginally recognized studies that address international business from a critical perspective and that more work is needed to turn international business into a societally engaged discipline.
What is critical international business research?
Critical thought on the activities of multinational corporations (MNCs) and, more generally, on the global post-war capitalist economy first emanated from economists and political scientists in the fields of international political economy and development (Frank, 1972). This coincided with the secular trends of de-colonialization, increasing global economic integration and claims of a new international economic order, which were evident from the 1950s through the 1970s. At the...