The sudden emergence of Covid-19 instantly changed the landscape of business (and conferences) around the world. Some of the features that characterize the business environment in the pandemic era include increasing uncertainty and complexity, the increasing importance of digital connectivity, changes in the international labor markets, or emerging geopolitical tensions. We already see first consequences on the firm-level, such as the resilience of GVCs becoming a leitmotif of international configuration and reconfiguration of MNEs’ activities, political discussions about regionalization and de-globalization, reshoring, and back-shoring strategies, to name just a few. With travelling often impossible and almost always limited, urgent calls for citizens to return to their home-countries, expatriates and management-teams of MNEs also had to adjust their way of doing business and living. The current situation also has substantial impact on how we work and live as academics. The EIBA online conference 2020 is dedicated to discussing the trends, the challenges, and the new normal in the international economic, technological, and social environment, as well as implications for MNEs and MNE employees.

 

To respond to the new situation, the EIBA 2020 annual conference will change, too. First, we will run the conference fully online. Second, and partially in response to the shift to online, we will adjust the structure of the conference as follows. The new structure, on the one hand, maintains most elements of a ‘normal’ EIBA conference, such as paper presentations, PDWs, or social interactions. On the other hand, the new digital conference environment creates new value for participants.  

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Day 1 – December 10th:

PDWs, doctoral workshops, and one opening plenary panel.

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Day 2 – December 11th:

Paper presentations (competitive, interactive, poster) and panel sessions as in regular EIBA conferences.

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Note that the online format of the sessions will be different from the traditional one to assure a high quality standard and a clear value-added for presenters and session guests (e.g., shorter presentations, session recordings, organized feedback, etc.).

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Day 3 – December 12th:

Special workshops on recent topics in IB teaching and research as well as academia in general by experts of the field. Workshops are free to all registered participants and will be recorded, so all EIBA registered participants can stream the sessions also at a later point in time.