CFP: Special Issue in Journal of Management Studies
Call for Papers
Historical Perspectives on Deglobalization’s
Antecedents, Outcomes, and Managerial Responses
Submission Deadline: 1 July 2023
Guest Editors:
Marcelo Bucheli (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Daniel Raff (University of Pennsylvania and NBER)
Andrew Smith (University of Liverpool)
Heidi Tworek (University of British Columbia).
JMS Editor:
Johann Fortwengel (King's Business School)
BACKGROUND
Since 2016, the use of the term deglobalization has increased markedly (Google
Trends; Van Bergeijk, 2019). This relatively novel word is now employed by journalists
(Financial Times, 2021; Economist, 2022), political risk consultants (Swarup, 2016),
policymakers, economists (Irwin, 2020; Van Bergeijk, 2019), historians (James, 2018; Tooze,
2018) and management academics (Aguilera, Henisz, Oxley, and Shaver, 2019; Buckley,
2020; Munjal, Budhwar, and Pereira, 2018; Witt, 2019) as they attempt to make sense of such
interrelated phenomena as rising protectionism, nativism, and the re-imposition of controls on
flows of goods (Peng, Kathuria, Viana, and Lima, 2021), capital (Roubini, 2020), labour
(Farndale, Thite, Budhwar, and Kwon, 2021) and ideas (De Chant, 2022). In effect, they use
the term deglobalization to describe developments that make economic exchange across
borders harder than was previously the case. For people who use the term in this fashion,
deglobalization denotes the opposite of globalization, economic liberalization, and movement
towards a borderless world economy. Users of the term deglobalization usually focus on
decisions taken by policymakers as the causal drivers behind it, although other drivers, such
as environmental and epidemiological, are also certainly possible. The rise of protectionism,
nativism, and the intensification of geopolitical rivalries in the early 2020s has created new
challenges that forced scholars studying firms and other organizations to bring politics and
hostility to globalization back into the agenda (Witt, Li, Välikangas and Lewin, 2021; Doh,
Darhan, Cassario, 2022). In the aftermath of the Cold War, many Western liberals
mistakenly saw globalization as inevitable and irreversible (Friedman, 2005). Few subscribe
to that viewpoint today.
The advent of deglobalization means that scholars in business schools are in
(seemingly) uncharted territory. However, the world economy has experienced cycles of
globalization and deglobalization over the last few centuries, as the business historian
Geoffrey Jones (2005) noted in a paper that now seems prophetic. History can serve as one
guide for thinking about deglobalization’s antecedents and outcomes, because historical and
history-informed research can advance management theory (Argyres, De Massis, Foss,
Frattini, Jones, and Silverman, 2020; Buckley, 2021; Raff, 2020; Sasaki, Kotlar, Ravasi, and
Vaara, 2020; Suddaby, Coraiola, Harvey, and Foster, 2020; Suddaby and Jaskiewicz, 2020;
Wadhwani, Kirsch, Welter, Gartner, and Jones, 2020; Wadhwani, Suddaby, Mordhorst, and
Popp, 2018). As Argyres et al. (2020) observe, the field of history-informed management
research is very diverse, encompassing myriad theoretical perspectives and research methods,
positivist, interpretivist, and phenomenological. Historical and history-informed research in
management includes papers that examine historical phenomena in light of management
theory. It also includes research about what managers and other actors in the present do with
historical narratives as in the literature in management on ‘rhetorical history’ -how managers
use historical narratives to persuade others- and ‘history-as-sensemaking’ -how managers
draw on their historical knowledge to make sense of the present (Suddaby, Coraiola, Harvey,
and Foster, 2020).
This Special Issue seeks to include diverse historical approaches to deglobalization
that can advance management theory and provide actionable guidance to practitioners. At the
same time, the Special Issue will enable historical scholars to engage with management,
producing theoretical cross-fertilisation. We anticipate that this Special Issue will include
representatives of the different branches of historical and history-informed research and of
different research traditions, including International Business, Strategic Management, and
Historical Organization Studies. We seek papers about deglobalization’s history (from the
distant past and right up through the present) and equally about how any of a wide variety of
essentially historical approaches to and perspectives on this once again current and salient
phenomenon can advance management theory and provide actionable guidance to decision-
makers.
TOPICS OF INTEREST
This Special Issue will showcase historical and history-informed research that
contributes to contemporary debates about deglobalization’s antecedents, outcomes, and
managerial responses. We therefore encourage submissions that engage with, but are not
limited to, the following themes.
Theme 1. Antecedents of Deglobalization
Deglobalization has many antecedents that remain underexplored by researchers. We
need to know about what causes deglobalization. We encourage contributors to be explicit
about the macro-level theories they use to understand global political economy, whether
hegemonic stability theory (Meyer and Li, 2022), Marxian theories of political economy (e.g.
Van Lent, Islam, Chowdury, 2020), world-systems theory, or postcolonial theory (Boussebaa,
Sinha, and Gabriel, 2014; Boussebaa and Brown, 2017; Said, 1978). Theories that causally
link deglobalization and pandemics (Tworek, 2019) might also be usefully applied here.
Historical and history-informed research can therefore help to address the following
questions, among others:
• How is the concept of waves of globalization and deglobalization developed by
economic historians (Findlay and O'Rourke, 2007) useful in management
research?
• How do organizations of different types (firms, non-profit organizations etc.)
contribute to and experience deglobalization?
• How can comparisons of different episodes of deglobalizations, such as the
present one with the deglobalization of the early 1930s, illuminate the
underlying causes of deglobalization, be they technological, ideational, or
environmental?
• What is the role of nonmarket strategy (e.g. Lawton, Dorobantu and Sun, 2020)
and/or corporate political activity (Lawton, McGuire, and Rajwani, 2013;
Sutton, Devine, Lamont, and Holmes 2021) in driving deglobalization?
• What is the role of corporate political activity in generating the policies
associated with deglobalization?
• What is the relationship between business and peace (Ganson, He, and Henisz,
2021)?
• How does deglobalization change the nature of institutional distance and actors’
perceptions of institutional distance?
• What causal connections, if any, exist between deglobalization and inequality?
Theme 2. Outcomes of Deglobalization
A second major theme of the special issue will be how deglobalization differentially
impacts organizations with different characteristics, such as size, purpose (e.g., profit-seeking
or non-profit), nationality, and organizational structure. Papers submitted to the special issue
might also engage ongoing debates about de-internationalization (e.g. Kafouros, Cavusgil,
Devinney, Ganotakis, and Fainshmidt, 2022), international entrepreneurship (Terjesen,
Hessels, and Li, 2016), and political risk management (Forbes, Kurosawa, and Wubs,
2018; Hartwell and Devinney, 2021) through the use of historical case studies. Historical and
history-informed research might shed light on the following questions, among others:
• Does deglobalization impose greater or lesser costs on large multinational
enterprises (MNEs) than on smaller ones?
• How does the structure of ownership and control of overseas operations affect
the costs of deglobalization?
• How does deglobalization impact the lived experiences of MNE managers,
relations between workers and managers, and the international human resource
management strategies of firms?
• How does deglobalization affect the entrepreneurial opportunities of overseas
supply chain firms?
• What are the implications of deglobalization for different types of
entrepreneurship?
• Does deglobalization have different impacts on family-owned firms versus
other firms?
• How does deglobalization change the relationship between firms and the state?
Theme 3. Managerial Responses to Deglobalization
A third major theme is understanding how managers in different types of
organizations (MNEs, domestic companies, non-profits) creatively respond to
deglobalization. Managers appear to have considerable agency in how they respond to
deglobalization. We know from the existing historical research that some multinational firms
responded to the deglobalization episodes of the early twentieth century by using cloaking
(Boon and Wubs, 2020; Casson and da Silva Lopes, 2013; Donzé and Kurosawa, 2013;
Forbes, Kurosawa, and Wubs, 2018; Jones and Lubinski, 2012; Kobrak and Hansen, 2004).
In a cloaking strategy, a firm attempts to hide its nationality to avoid being caught in the
cross-fire between warring nation states. Other multinational firms of that era exploited the
tensions between nations associated with deglobalization to engage in “geopolitical
jockeying” (Lubinski and Wadhwani, 2020). Historically, some firms responded to
deglobalization by embracing host country’s nationalism (Moreno, 2005) or by strategically
incorporating members of a protectionist host country’s elite into the firm’s hierarchy
(Bucheli and Salvaj, 2018; Garner, 2011). Firms have also used wartime sanctions regimes to
attain competitive advantage (Mulder, 2022). We would therefore welcome historical and
history-informed papers that deal with such questions as:
• Which strategies have managers developed to deal with deglobalization?
• How can managers draw on their knowledge of history in trying to respond to
deglobalization? How have they done so?
• Does deglobalization create profit opportunities for entrepreneurs and firms and, if so,
how are such opportunities identified and exploited?
• What ethical dilemmas does deglobalization create for managers and how do they
resolve them?
• How might deglobalization change how the managers of multinational firms make
decisions about how to enter new markets and manage political risk?
SUBMISSION PROCESS
Submission deadline: 1 July 2023
Expected Publication: Late 2025
• Submissions should be prepared using the JMS Manuscript Preparation Guidelines
(http://www.socadms.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/JMS-ManuscriptPreparationG…)
• Manuscripts should be submitted using the JMS ScholarOne system
(https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jmstudies)
• Articles will be reviewed according to the JMS double-blind review process.
• We welcome informal enquiries relating to the Special Issue, proposed topics, and potential
fit with the Special Issue objectives. Please direct any questions on the Special Issue to the
guest editors.
• Marcelo Bucheli, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: mbucheli@illinois.edu
• Daniel Raff, University of Pennsylvania and NBER: dan raff@wharton.upenn.edu
• Andrew Smith, University of Liverpool: adasmith@liverpool.ac.uk
• Heidi Tworek, University of British Columbia: heidi.tworek@ubc.ca
SPECIAL ISSUE EVENTS
Pre-submission
Online workshops for individuals interested in submitting to the Special Issue will be held in
the autumn of 2022. Potential contributors are strongly encouraged to attend at least one of
these workshops, which will be held at times to accommodate researchers in different time
zones. The guest editors will discuss the aims and scope of the Special Issue and will answer
questions from potential contributors at these workshops. Those interested in attending these
Zoom workshops should prepare a two-slide PowerPoint presentation that succinctly
describes the aims of the paper they are planning to submit.
Post-submission
It is anticipated that the guest editors will organize a special issue in-person revision
workshop (date and location TBA) for authors who have received an initial R&R decision on
their manuscript. Please note that participation in the workshop does not guarantee
acceptance of the paper. Participation in this workshop is also not a prerequisite for
publication.
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