Conclusions: Toward a Humanistic Agenda for International Business and Management

Abstract

The era of globalization has brought with it previously unimagined material wealth creation and innovation. International business and management scholarship has largely followed this wealth, through its focus on foreign direct investment, global efficiency, scale economies and international dissemination of state-of-the-art knowledge and technology. Other discussions reflecting an increasing embeddedness, a heightened connectivity and shared destiny, a phenomenon which we label globality, receive less attention. Unfortunately concerted inquiry regarding the autonomy, rights, well-being, participation and self-determination of populations around the world, and the quality of the natural and social environments they inhabit, have received far less attention from international business and management scholars. Our aim in undertaking this volume was therefore to extend and reinvigorate the fields of international business and management by promoting new or marginalized scholarly discourse and practices that reflect globality, guided by the tenets of humanistic management: dignity, well-being and human flourishing.