Research and teaching at the Department of International Economics and Management cover four core research areas:

International Business

International business relates to all cross-border business activities, including international trade, investment and knowledge dissemination. It covers not only issues related to the organization, management, and strategic orientation of international firms - including relations between headquarters and subsidiaries and international business and innovation - the creation, exploitation, transfer and dissemination of technical and managerial knowledge within multinational firms. It also covers the political, institutional, cultural, and economic conditions, which affect and are affected by these firms. The complexity of these issues encourages interdisciplinary, multi-method approaches.

Corporate Governance

In recent years corporate governance has become an important topic for business throughout the world following increasing investor activism, internationalization of stock markets and the spread of corporate governance codes.

Corporate governance can be defined as the control and direction of companies by ownership, boards, incentives and other mechanisms. It is influenced by ownership and board structure, company law, professional standards, information and incentive systems - factors that vary significantly across nations and give rise to different models like the US, the German or the Japanese model. Comparative corporate governance is concerned with international variations in governance systems and their effect on company behavior, for example, in transition and developing economies. At the firm level different ownership structures are compared as are alternative internal corporate control mechanisms. An important emerging stream of research is concerned with corporate social responsibility, corporate values and the stakeholder theory of the firm.

Emerging Markets

A group of new markets have emerged because of institutional changes, which have resulted in more openness to the global economy, restructuring of production and high growth rates. Research at INT has focused on Eastern Europe and South and East Asia, but may be broadened also to cover parts of Latin America and Africa. The Research on emerging markets includes:

Asian Studies

The globalization process has been heavily shaped and influenced by the economic rise of India and China. China and India are central to the global value chains and key concepts in the globalization debate, such as off-shoring and outsourcing simply cannot be discussed without referring to these countries. While maintaining a focus on these areas, it is still important to note that Japan is the world’s second largest economy in nominal terms. Japanese investments in the region play a crucial role, and have contributed to the industrial take-off, which currently takes place in most Southeast Asian regions.

Research within Asian Studies is based on cross-disciplinary, national and cross-regional studies in order to provide reliable analysis on current political, economic and social developments in the Asian region, focusing especially on China, Japan, India and Southeast Asia.

The department hosts three research centers:

Asia Research Centre(ARC) is a specialized research unit offering research and teaching in the field of Asian Studies. With its particular strengths on current political, economic and social developments in the Asian region, ARC provides a timely scholarly, policy-oriented and business strategic contextual understanding of Asia to a host of interested parties representing academia, the political establishment, the media, the public as well as the national and international business community. The key strength of ARC up until now has been Chinese studies at a high international level and to some degree Japanese studies. In 2008 Indian Studies was established and ARC is now poised to include contemporary India as a core area of research. Other members of ARC are involved with research on South East Asian business networks, Asian cultural industries and Asian business culture. For organizational convenience four research units have been established. These are:

Center for International Business and Emerging Markets(CIBEM) has been established in 2009 with new staff as well as people from the Center for East European Studies, CEES, (see earlier reports 1996-2008 here) and from the Center for International Business and Innovation (see earlier reports 2006-2008 here). CIBEM seeks to develop and disseminate a deeper understanding of:

Center for Corporate Governance (CCG) focuses on the control and direction of companies by ownership, boards, incentives and other mechanisms.

Current research topics include: