E-Commerce Policy and International Business

E-Commerce Policy and International Business open_in_new

Guest Editors:

Background and rationale for the focused issue

The rise of digitization and ICTs-enabled technologies have played an important role in overcoming cross-border transactions costs, thus offering significant opportunities and benefits to firms to compete on a global scale. The growth and widespread diffusion of internet have created numerous opportunities for firms to provide products and services across both developed and developing markets.

Current research has focused on examining e-commerce strategy; the barriers and adoption related challenges of e-commerce (see Agarwal and Wu, 2015 for an overview), among others. Within the international business field, one stream of research has applied Dunning’s OLI paradigm to explain the rise of e-commerce firms (e.g., Singh and Kundu, 2002). Recent IB scholarships have focused on examining the rise of platform-based firms and highlighted the importance of direct and indirect networks effect in explaining the internationalization and cross-border activities of platform-based firms (e.g., Brouthers et al., 2016; Chen et al., 2019; Zeng, Khan & De Silva, 2019). Despite the contributions of extant literature, there has been limited discussions around e-commerce related policy and how it affects the international business activities, as well as global value chains of multinational enterprises. 

The aim of this focused issue is to encourage scholars to explore the following research questions at the intersections of international business, public policy and legal aspect of e-commerce. We would like to receive both conceptual and empirical papers.

Research Questions

Papers for the focused issue could fall within the following questions and related topic areas:

  1. How does e-commerce affect global capital flows to emerging and developed markets?
  2. What are the ways that SMEs can use crowdfunding to internationalize?
  3. How are multinationals affected by e-commerce policy?
  4. How does e-commerce policy affect the IB and SME ecosystem?
  5. How does e-commerce affect trade flows in different institutional contexts?
  6. What is the role of WTO in shaping e-commerce policy, and how does regulatory harmonization affect e-commerce policies?
  7. Does e-commerce policy affect cross-border investment from venture capitalists and private equity funds?
  8. How do regulatory changes affect e-commerce policies and adoption of e-commerce across different countries?
  9. How does e-commerce policy affect multinational value chains?
  10. How does e-commerce policy affect the link between SMEs and multinationals?

Submission Guidelines

Papers for this focused issue should be prepared in accordance with the MIR’s submission guidelines available at: https://www.springer.com/business+%26+management/journal/11575?detailsPage=pltci_2329480

Papers should be submitted directly to the guest editors at ecommibpol@gmail.com by the deadline of August 31, 2020.  All paper will go through the MIR regular double-blind review process.

References

Agarwal, J., & Wu, T. (2015). Factors influencing growth potential of e‐commerce in emerging economies: An institution‐based N‐OLI framework and research propositions. Thunderbird International Business Review, 57(3), 197-215.

Brouthers, K.D., Geisser, K.D., & Rothlauf, F. (2016). Explaining the internationalization of ibusiness firms. Journal of International Business Studies, 47(5), 513-534.

Chen, L., Shaheer, N., Yi, J., & Li, S. (2019). The international penetration of ibusiness firms: Network effects, liabilities of outsidership and country clout. Journal of International Business Studies, 50(2), 172-192.

Singh, N., & Kundu, S. (2002). Explaining the growth of e‐commerce corporations: An extension and application of the eclectic paradigm. Journal of International Business Studies, 33, 679-697.

Zeng, J., Khan, Z., & De Silva, M. (2019). The emergence of multi-sided platform MNEs: Internalization theory and networks. International Business Review, in press.