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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Noemi SinkovicsORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Policy relevance under fast-moving conditions. International business (IB) research increasingly unfolds in environments where public policy actively shapes cross-border firm behavior. Governments sometimes intervene directly in global value chains, industrial organization, and corporate strategy through industrial policies, security-driven trade measures, sustainability regulations, and crisis-response instruments. These interventions may emerge under conditions of uncertainty, political contestation, and time pressure, when policymakers have limited capacity to seek or absorb rigorous academic evidence. At the same time, managers often need to anticipate, influence, and adapt to policy initiatives as they are being designed and implemented. Understanding IB phenomena in such contexts therefore requires analytical approaches capable of capturing the co-evolution of strategies, institutions, and interests while policy processes are still unfolding. Producing high-quality, policy-relevant IB research thus cannot solely rely on ex ante theorizing or ex post analysis. It also calls for an engaged approach that combines scholarly analysis with structured, substantive interaction with relevant stakeholders throughout the research process. For instance, scholars may collaborate with public agencies to jointly frame emerging regulatory challenges through rapid scoping conversations and joint analysis of consultation materials to identify where administrative capacity, enforcement routines, or reporting requirements are likely to create implementation constraints. In this editorial, we argue that such engaged scholarship provides a powerful way for generating insights that are scientifically robust, credible to policy actors, and usable within policy processes, while fully meeting the publication standards of the Journal of International Business Policy (JIBP).
Author(s): Sinkovics N, van Tulder R, Giroud A, Wang EY
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of International Business Policy
Year: 2026
Pages: Epub ahead of print
Print publication date: 25/04/2026
Online publication date: 25/04/2026
Acceptance date: 24/03/2026
Date deposited: 30/04/2026
ISSN (electronic): 2522-0705
Publisher: Springer
URL: https://doi.org/10.1057/s42214-026-00243-z
DOI: 10.1057/s42214-026-00243-z
ePrints DOI: 10.57711/tvpk-qx45
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