E-Commerce Policy and International Business.

The rise of digitization and information and communication technologies (ICT) is playing a vital role in facilitating global trade and business activities and in overcoming cross-border transaction costs. In so doing, it offers firms significant benefits and opportunities to compete on a global scale, as witnessed during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The growth and widespread diffusion of internet-enabled technologies and platforms have created numerous opportunities for firms to provide products and services across both developed and developing markets. Yet, limited research has been conducted in the international business domain to explore the rise of ecommerce and its implications for international business scholarship. In this focused issue, we present an examination of the role played by e-commerce in international business, paying particular attention to the policy aspect of e-commerce and issuing a call for a greater integration of e-commerce policy in international business research.

Reimagining global food value chains through effective resilience to COVID-19 shocks and similar future events: A dynamic capability perspective.

The restructuring of global value/supply chains gained increasing attention as the unprecedented COVID-19 echoed around the world. Yet, the COVID-19 related theory-driven, large scale quantitative, and empirical studies are relatively scarce. This study advances the extant literature by empirically investigating how do firms in the global food value chains (GFVCs) re-imagine their businesses structure in response to the COVID-19-becoming more resilient and competitive to the current pandemic and similar future events. We leverage a unique data of 231 senior managers of the Australian GFVCs and examine their firms' response strategies. Drawing upon key insights from the dynamic capability view, we find that GFVCs' competitiveness is achieved when exposure to COVID-19 shocks elicits dynamic capabilities-readiness, response, recovery-and these capabilities work jointly and sequentially to cultivate resilience. A key finding of this study is that firms with domestic plus global value chain partners are more resilient than those having only global business partners. This finding implies that excessive reliance on offshoring sometimes becomes lethal, especially amid unexpected and prolonged global shocks and, therefore, companies should strike a balance between domestic and global business partners to remain competitive. These findings offer important contributions to theory, practice, and UN sustainable development goals.

COVID-19 and digitalization: The great acceleration.

Inspired by burgeoning scholarly interest in the role of digitalization in the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper examines how the COVID-19 pandemic is driving or constraining the digitalization of businesses around the globe. We contend that COVID-19 is "the great accelerator" in fast-tracking the existing global trend towards embracing modern emerging technologies ushering in transformations in lifestyle, work patterns, and business strategies. Thus, COVID-19 has evolved to be a kind of "catalyst" for the adoption and increasing use of digitalization in work organization and the office, alongside presenting foreseen and unforeseen opportunities, challenges, and costs-leading to negative and positive feedback loops. In this article, we develop and advance a conceptual model by linking the different forces for and against digitalization in response to the pandemic. Our analysis indicates that adoption of emerging technologies may be hindered by vested external interests, nostalgia, and employer opportunism, as well as negative effects on employee well-being that undermine productivity, work-life balance, and future of work. Whilst digitalization may bring new opportunities, the process imparts risks that may be hard to mitigate or prepare for. Finally, we draw out the wider theoretical and practical implications of our analysis.

COVID-19 and business renewal: Lessons and insights from the global airline industry.

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected the fortunes of multiple companies around the globe. Accordingly, questions are increasingly being asked about how organizations can revitalize during and after a crisis. Yet, we have limited understanding of how organizations renew themselves during crises over time. We explore this question through the lens and examination of two South-Asian airlines: Pakistan International Airlines and Sri Lankan Airlines. The cases offer important insights into the reasons behind underperformance of state-controlled enterprises and renewal activities. We shed light on strategic renewal (SR) in the wake of increasing liberalization and deregulations in the global airline industry. To this end, we propose a four-stage approach towards renewing such underperforming organizations to respond effectively to black swan events and external shocks.