EIBA Leeds: IB in a Confused World Order

A report on the EIBA conference at Leeds University in December 2019

Starting the day after one of the most confused elections in the UK, the theme of the Leeds EIBA conference couldn't have been more apt. After a full Friday with a Doctoral Symposium, Early Career Network and no less than four journal paper development workshops, the official conference started late afternoon with an openining plenary [see picture of the panel and a picture of Ling Zhang and me on the first rows], where Victor Mallet, Will Hutton, Geoffrey Jones and Eleanor Westney reflected on the conference theme. A full video recording will be available in due course.

Conference sessions

The rest of the conference was absolutely packed with a range of plenary, paper and and poster sessions. Many of the sessions were recorded.

EIBA plenaries and recollections

Topical panels: business models, global value chains, and entrepreneurship

Topical panels: highly skilled migrants, time, and MNE impact

Teaching panels

Paper presentations

My co-author and Middlesex colleague Shasha Zhao participated in no fewer than two paper presentations [see right-hand picture above for the first paper] and one panel presentation [see left-hand picture above]. Links to slides of her two presentations are below. The recording for the panel [Can MNEs Be a Force for Good?] is linked above.

  • Dodourova, M., Zhao, S., Harzing, A.-W. (2019) New Wine in New Bottles: R&D Internationalization in a Transition Economy - Presentation slides
  • Zhao, S., Papanastassiou, M., Pearce, R.D., Iguchi, C. (2019) MNE R&D Internationalization in Developing Asia - Presentation slides

Another one of my co-authors, Ling Zhang, and I both presented in the last paper session of the conference [see pictures above], expertly chaired by Natalia Fey.

  • Zhang, L.E.; Pauksztat, B. (2019) Can Diplomats Become Global Citizens? A Social Network Study on Cultural and Role Identities of Global Workers and their Spouses
  • Śliwa M., Ciuk, S. Harzing, A.-W. (2019) From Language Differences to Linguistic Inclusion: Breaking the Native Speaker Stranglehold - Presentation slides

CYGNA dinner

This conference also featured a first: a CYGNA dinner. Although CYGNA members had held a panel at a conference before (see WAIB Panel: Academic career strategies for women in the UK) and we have organized a writing bootcamp at Middlesex University to celebrate our 5-year anniversary, we had never organized a conference dinner before. So when I noticed that there were no events on the program for Saturday evening I suggested a CYGNA dinner. We rapidly accumulated 15 interested swans (see picture below) for a wonderful dinner at the Indian Tiffin Room. Everyone agreed it should become a conference tradition.

Towards the end of the dinner Xiaohui Liu explained that no dinner was complete without a speech and she held a lovely speech to thank me for organizing the dinner and to congratulate me on receiving the Leading with Kindness award. I was very moved.

Later we discovered that even more swans were present at the conference. However, I don't think we would have been able to fit an even bigger group in any of the Leeds restaurants. EIBA coincided with the most popular evening of the year for company Christmas dinners, so we were lucky to get a table at all. If CYGNA keeps growing we might need to organize two dinners at different restaurants at the next conference!

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