Preface

The fifth volume of the Book Series Progress in International Business Research combines two basic themes in international business studies. On the one hand, global interdependence continues to rise, even though it looked as if the financial and economic crisis of 2008 and its aftermath would retard or stop the globalization process. On the other hand, firms engaged in international activities keep testing out new organizational structures that reconfigure their boundaries. Property rights over assets and control over decisions within and across these boundaries are central to the design of the multinational organization. Although the boundaries of the firm were originally stressed by Reginald Coase in his famous Economica article of 1937 (Volume 4, pp. 254–266) about The Nature of the Firm, the increasing complexity of international activities and the changing relationships between countries and regions make this into a continuous research challenge in international business.