Journal Press India

Editorial

January - June 2024, Volume 11, Issue 1

In the ever changing dynamics of international business (IB) operations, this issue of FOCUS: Journal of International Business presents an interesting amalgam of papers that have an interdisciplinary flavour (such as new frontiers in Artificial Intelligence for global business and understanding global unemployment crisis) as well as those papers that deal with conventionally significant areas of IB (such as international trade and sustainability in international business).

An interesting paper examining the dynamics between financial inclusion, financial stability and foreign direct investment (FDI) by Rinku Manocha tries to establish if measures taken by government to support financial inclusion and greater financial stability tend to attract more FDI into a country. Employing the ARDL framework for India for the period of 2001-2020, the results indicate a positive causal association between financial stability and FDI in the long-run.

With the global economy witnessing paradoxical phenomenon of jobless growth, an insightful paper by Vikas Kumar examines unemployment growth in both industrialized and developing nations like the USA, the EU, India, and China. According to the analysis in the paper, technical advances, globalisation, labour market regulation, and industrial structure changes have increased unemployment growth. The author suggest innovative steps for policymakers such as digital skills training and remote employment help.

Topical issues related to role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in global businesses as well as sustainability practices have been addressed in different papers in this issue of FOCUS. The paper by Gourav Roy and Amrita Chakraborty analyses the recent advancements and prominence of AI in identification of untapped markets for expansion of international businesses. Employing the method of interviews with global service experts, their findings indicated the role of predictive analytics, personalisation, and AI analytics in the expansion of international businesses. The paper also introduces a framework to discuss the synergies of AI in global businesses. With MNEs taking increased cognizance of sustainability driven practices, Vandana Jain, Kinneri Jain and Vivek Vedant, in their paper, delve into the sustainability measures adopted by two prominent Emerging market Multinationals Enterprises (EMNEs) from Indian automotive sector, namely Mahindra & Mahindra and Tata Motors. While both companies are found to prioritize renewable energy and efficient resource utilization, Mahindra & Mahindra distinguishes itself through a dedicated emphasis on water conservation and community involvement. On the other hand, Tata Group leads in electric vehicle market share and the adoption of green building practices.

Namrata Anand and Satwik Gupta conduct an exploratory analysis of bilateral trade and Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) of India with Australia. The empirical results indicate rising trends of economic cooperation between these two countries. The RCA analysis found seven out of the top ten products that Australia imports from India at HS 2 digit classification to be competitive. Additionally, at HS 6 digit classification, out of top 100 products, 55 were found to be competitive. Sankar Rajeev, in his paper, provides perspectives on the impact of globalization on project management. Analysing available information systematically, the author suggests that a project manager in the case of a global project needs to look at the peculiarities by way of challenges and risks in order to mitigate them. It may be by way of differences in procedures adopted by the host country or foreign exchange exposure or laws which govern the project and contract.

An interesting Review paper by Prashant Kumar Yadav and Anil Kumar Tamta presents a bibliometric analysis of scholarly networks within the field of International Business over the period 2020-2024. By employing VOSviewer, the authors identify key nodes of collaboration and pivotal publications that have significantly influenced the domain. The findings reveal a robust network of international collaborations, with predominant contributors from USA, UK, China, Australia and India. The authors also trace the evolution of thematic priorities in IB, noting a marked emphasis on digital transformation, sustainability, and global market dynamics post-pandemic.

I thank the authors for their valuable contributions and our team of reviewers for their insightful comments that brought significant value addition to the accepted papers. Our editorial team is also thankful to our readers and patrons for their continued support and feedback that have driven us towards consistent improvement in our journal quality.

Prof. (Dr.) Niti Bhasin
Editor-in-chief

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