This paper argues the case for a morally superior globalisation designed to overcome some of the most striking limitations of recent global waves but retaining the economic power to address global challenges. There are three steps in reimagining a more acceptable globalisation: its primary focus; a corporate morality to ensure adherence to ethical practices; and the elimination of its negative externalities. For the first we suggest the adoption of the goal of elevating sustainable development to be the primary driver of globalisation. The second step involves acceptance of sacrifice by all agents: consumers, producers, governments, and investors, to widen humanity’s moral circle and value future generations as much as the present generation. The final stage involves a commitment by governments and multinational agencies to correct some of the obvious imperfections of globalisation while also ensuring its continuing operation. Our discussion represents a useful thought experiment and requires a significant change in thinking within those institutions charged with setting the “rules of the game” if we are to devise a fairer global system.

This paper employs a pattern matching approach to explore the tensions arising from differences in the ethical dispositions of multinational enterprise (MNE) buyers and their suppliers within the Bangladeshi apparel manufacturing sector. It examines how varying ethical principles shape the development, implementation, and outcomes of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and labor standards. Our analysis resulted in the identification of four scenarios: legitimacy with friction, mitigated forced alignment, collaborative enhancement, and principled resistance. However, the scenario, principled resistance, is purely conceptual, as none of our empirical cases aligned with this category. We extend work highlighting the importance of ethical foundations for strategic decision making. This study advances the understanding of global value chain governance, particularly regarding MNEs’ contribution to the socially oriented Sustainable Development Goals. Our findings suggest that, out of the four scenarios, the combination of virtue ethics and consequentialist principles is most likely to facilitate a just transition to a more desirable state in contexts characterized by development challenges and institutional voids.

This article explores the role of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Asia, a region characterized by economic dynamism, diverse socio-political contexts, and significant environmental challenges. Since the launch of the SDGs in 2015, MNEs have emerged as key players in fostering sustainable development, notably through their global value chains (GVCs), knowledge transfer, innovation, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. However, their contributions remain uneven, constrained by short-term profitability goals, fragmented regulatory frameworks, or symbolic CSR practices. Drawing on existing literature and empirical insights, this article examines how MNEs integrate sustainability into their strategies, balancing economic imperatives with societal and environmental responsibilities. It highlights the potential of ethical corporate practices, stakeholder collaboration, and policy support to drive transformative change. The article also identifies challenges such as governance gaps and limited stakeholder engagement, emphasizing the need for systemic reforms. Concluding with recommendations for future research, it underscores the importance of understanding Asia’s unique context to unlock the full potential of MNEs in achieving the SDGs and fostering sustainable development globally.

In this study, we answer the call for integrating insights from different language-related research areas in international business. We investigate the antecedents and outcomes of mandating English as a common language in the Indian subsidiaries and joint ventures of Cummins, a large US-headquartered industrial, multinational enterprise (MNE). Our Transaction Cost Theory lens shows how the mandated adoption of English significantly improved the Indian subsidiaries’ position in the MNE’s network. Through retrospectively analyzing the experience of the authors in top and middle management roles with Cummins in India and utilizing a range of publicly available information, we also identified the significant role of English in fostering inclusion in India, where the broad societal context of diversity and inclusion is very different from that prevailing in the MNE’s home country.

The present study investigates the influence of femininity as a cultural value on overcoming institutional hurdles and facilitating entrepreneurial opportunity development by rural women in Iran. We conducted 15 in-depth interviews with rural women entrepreneurs over a year to identify the process of rural women entrepreneurship. Our findings show that when regulative institutions fail to accomplish the expected role in support of rural women entrepreneurship, instrumentalizing the femininity of Iranian culture can overcome the hurdle. We contribute to rural women entrepreneurship by theorizing the influence of femininity as an alternative institutional arrangement in overcoming regulative institutional hurdles and the social construction of new opportunities. We also contribute to theory by further characterizing femininity in Hofstede’s work and suggesting a connection between Hofstede’s macro-level model and micro-level analysis. We frame research results and justify interpretations by providing contextual details to explain how femininity works in a specific Asian cultural context when building women entrepreneurship. We furthermore provide practical implications for policymakers.

Diversity and inclusion scholarship addresses inequality at work across categories of difference marked with historical disadvantages such as gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, and class or categories meaningful for the industrial, organisational or local settings. This scholarship has not considered political ties to be a diversity strand. However, political ties are a considerable source of uneven power relations, unearned privileges, and unjust discrimination in many contexts. Similarly, political ties could be sources of disadvantage, exclusion and discrimination for individuals with weak, absent or oppositional political affiliations. Our paper focuses on the Asian context, where political ties are often a legitimate human and institutional resource that can shape individual choices and chances at work. By defining political ties as a diversity and inclusion strand, we critique the legitimacy of political ties as a dominant and desirable resource and present political tie discrimination as a wicked social problem that entrenches uneven relations of power and authority in workplaces. Highlighting how political affiliation manifests across different national contexts in Asia, we explore the utility of adding political ties to the Asian vernacular to regulate workplace diversity and inclusion. Asia provides an interesting context in which the interplay between political affiliation and workplace relations is often culturally endorsed, remains unregulated and unscrutinised through ethical and anti-discrimination regulations. Thus, Asia provides an ideal setting to explore the emergence of political tie diversity and inclusion at work. We illustrate this through country-specific examples, illustrating the cross-national varieties of political tie diversity in the Asian business context. We also suggest a roadmap to manage political tie diversity and inclusion for this context.

Following a call for actor-centric research in HRM, we look at the modes how HR managers acquire HR knowledge. Our interview study with HR managers of large established companies in Japan finds a clear preference for direct inter-corporate knowledge exchanges instead of the engagement of outside consultants. Discussing our findings, we explain the reasons for this preference. ing from the case of Japan, we then propose with reference to institutional theory and isomorphism that the way HR knowledge is spread is linked to the nature of employment systems. In external labour markets, HR knowledge has been reported to be predominantly spread through business consultants, educational institutions, and career changes of HR professionals, resulting in normative isomorphism. We propose that in internal labour markets, like Japan’s, companies resort to direct inter-corporate knowledge exchange, which leads to mimetic isomorphism.

Drawing on the open innovation literature, we examine the relationship between alliances with science-based and market-based partners on the one hand, and impactful and lower-impact innovations, on the other hand. Specifically, we predict that alliances with science-based partners will boost impactful innovations while alliances with market-based partners will boost low-impact innovations. We also examine how the social capital of the Board of Directors moderates these relationships. We base our analyses on a large dataset of Chinese firms constructed from diverse sources and find strong support for our hypothesized relationships. We identify the theoretical and managerial implications of our study.

In many countries, the government plays a regulative role in corporate social responsibility (CSR) as an external overseer of economic and public market sectors. However, owing to the politically embedded nature of extensive corporations in China, the government's influence over CSR is not only exogenous but may even endogenously shape the general scope of CSR of companies in comparison to the West. To date, this has not been extensively examined. We explore this from the standpoint of the scope of beneficiaries and CSR domains, which accurately depict the welfare effects of business in developing countries. Based on a resource dependence perspective, we conduct a quantitative content analysis on a sample of 160 Chinese listed companies and developed a two-level model of political embeddedness. The results show a complex interaction between politics and business, revealing the opposing influence of political embeddedness at different levels.