The potential of virtual global mobility: implications for practice and future research

PurposeThe COVID-19 pandemic has forced global organizations to adopt technology-driven virtual solutions involving faster, less costly and more effective ways to work worldwide even after the pandemic. One potential outcome may be through virtual global mobility (VGM), defined as the replacement of personal physical international interactions for work purposes with electronic personal online interactions. The purpose of this article is to establish VGM as a theoretical concept and explore to what extent it can replace or complement physical global work assignments.Design/methodology/approachThis perspectives article first explores advantages and disadvantages of global virtual work and then discusses the implementation of VGM and analyses to what extent and how VGM can replace and complement physical global mobility.FindingsRepresenting a change of trend, long-term corporate expatriates could become necessary core players in VGM activities while the increase of the number of global travelers may be halted or reversed. VGM activities will grow and further develop due to a continued rapid development of communication and coordination technologies. Consequently, VGM is here to stay!Originality/value The authors have witnessed a massive trend of increasing physical global mobility where individuals have crossed international borders to conduct work. The authors are now observing the emergence of a counter-trend: instead of moving people to their work the authors often see organizations moving work to people. This article has explored some of the advantages, disadvantages, facilitators and barriers of such global virtual work. Given the various purposes of global work the authors chart the suitability of VGM to fulfill these organizational objectives.

Cross-cultural Analysis of Main Economic Partners of the Republic of Moldova

The paper represents a comparative study of national culture features of the main commercial partners of the Republic of Moldova and the countries preferred by Moldovan citizens to emigrate: Romania, Russia, Italy and Germany. The research focused on two cultural bipolar models: Hofstede, which comprises six cultural dimensions: individualism vs. collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity vs. femininity, long-term vs. short-term orientation, indulgence vs. restraint, and Trompenaars-Hampden-Turner, which contains seven dimensions: universalism vs. particularism, individualism vs. communitarianism, neutral vs. emotional, specific vs. diffuse, achievement vs. ascription, sequential time vs. synchronous time, internal vs. external control. The established similarities and differences, knowledge of cultural specificity in international interactions, both social and economic, is an added value for individuals to successfully integrate and fit into a society, other than their native, and for businesses to be successfully managed on international level.

Building on open economy politics to understand the stalled EU–India trade negotiations

Global trade governance is increasingly characterized by a growing fragility in multilateral institutions and a preference for bilateral negotiations. The literature on such negotiations focuses primarily on successful agreements. Academic research on unsuccessful or stalled bilateral talks is limited, although better understanding of such outcomes may provide lessons for future negotiations. This article contributes to such understanding by proposing a revised open economy politics (OEP) framework, adapted to ‘second generation’ OEP analysis. Our framework highlights the multidirectional linkages between the trinity of interests, institutions and international interactions within trade negotiations, while adding the role of power and ideas to the analysis. We leverage our revised framework to explore why the European Union–India Free Trade Agreement (EUIFTA) negotiations stalled, thus providing insights as negotiators seek to revive them. Drawing on 45 semi-structured interviews conducted over a seven-year period in the EU and India, we examine what impact these different factors had on the progress of talks. Our results suggest that our revised OEP approach provides a multi-layered and integrated framework which enables us to better understand negotiating outcomes. Furthermore, our findings suggest that the shifting balance between emerging economies and developed economies as a result of the geopolitical (power) shifts and ideational change will affect future trade negotiations.

Book Review: Dealing in Desires

This is a review of Kimberly Kay Hoang’s (2015) Dealing in Desire. Her ethnographic study observes four different bars in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam: 1) Kong Sao Bar, 2) Naught Girls, 3) Secrets, and 4) Lavender. Hoang traces different representations of the global financial sector after the 2008 financial crisis and explores the relationship between Asian ascendancy and Western decline. From the local to the international, interactions with clients and hostesses in the bars of Ho Chi Minh City demonstrate a new global trend: the rise in transactions occurring among a global financial sector undefined by traditional social structures (e.g., commercial or national banks). By moving from observer to participant, Hoang develops a deeper understanding of the capital and labour practices that these men and women engage in, highlighting how their everyday experiences demonstrate that nightlife in the city is a way for locals to move up the socio-economic ladder.

Protean Power Concept in International Relations: Origins and Prospects

In contrast to the representatives of other directions in International Relations Science, constructivists have long distanced themselves from the notion of power, but in the 2000s and 2010s, due to the increasing interest in conceptualizing this phenomenon, the first attempts of the constructivist interpretation of the concept of power started to emerge. Such interpretations received their fullest expression in the concept of Protean power, developed by a group of researchers under the informal leadership of Peter Katzenstein. The article analyzes the main features of the Protean power, as well as the emerging practices. The author shows that this type of power is less associated with specific actors and their intentions than other types of power, since it is aimed at overcoming uncertainty under the conditions when it is impossible to calculate risks. This formulation of the question allows one to reconsider the role of the creativity principle in international interactions and provide it with a higher ontological status. According to the author’s conclusion, the concept of Protean power continues the line of revising the ontological foundations of the studies of world politics, which has emerged within constructivism in the last decade. Similarly to some other constructivist concepts, this concept implies a holistic interpretation of the phenomenon of power in international relations and reflects the desire to move away from the classical (Newtonian) worldview. Although today it provides many reasons for criticism and, perhaps, needs further elaboration and reinterpretation, its contribution to the scientific discussion of the ontology of power in international interactions is beyond doubt. Protean power is paving the way that allows bypassing the neo-positivist consensus that has so far set the tone in the International Relations Science.

The Transnational Formation of a Healthy Nation: Uruguayan Travelling Reformers in the Early 20th Century (1905–1931)

Introduction: This study traces the different forms of trans- and international interactions of the Uruguayan public health reformers in the first three decades of the 20th century (1905–1931) and proposes to analyze these interactions regarding the factors that facilitated them, the purposes they followed, and the meanings which the reformers attributed to their travels and missions. Development: The analysis of this study is divided into five sections. The first section provides a thorough literature review of the transnational perspectives on health, welfare, and labor policies in early twentieth-century Uruguay, followed by a second section that introduces this study’s main group of actors—Uruguayan health reformers attached to key state institutions—and identifies the different forms of their transnational interaction. Three analytical sections follow, which take a closer look in turn at the reformers’ participation in international conferences, their individual study tours to specific institutions in Europe and the Americas, and individual participation in a collective study tour organized by the League of Nations Health Organization (INHO). Conclusion: This study ends with a summary of the findings, examines their relation to the existing literature, and provides an outlook toward further questions to explore.

China Risen?

This book is framed around two very simple and interrelated questions; what is global power and in what ways does China have it? By focussing on political economy and ideational dimensions of global power, it shows how Xi Jinping, whilst building on what came before, has developed a set of strategic strands designed to bring about (global) change. This does not mean that all Chinese international interactions are a direct result of a clearly coordinated and controlled state project; grand strategy and state interest and intent can be (and indeed, often is) assumed when in reality Chinese overseas actors are utilising their ‘bounded autonomy’ to attain other objectives. The changing nature of China’s global economic role – not least the growth of outward investment – might have been enough it itself to shine a new light on the nature of China’s rise. So too might the way that China’s leaders have articulated their global governance reform agenda and used an ‘occidentalism’ to establish China’s leadership credentials. Or the nature of attempts to influence (or even control) the way that China’s rise is discussed and debated across the world. It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that while a risen China might have gained followership from some, concern about the consequences of China’s rise has increased quite significantly in places where it was previously viewed with less apprehension.

Interest, Actors and Intent: Studying the Global by Understanding the Domestic

The chapter disaggregates different types and levels of authority and agency in China’s international interactions. It outlines a system of bounded autonomy where the state retains the ability to set overarching agendas, and also to control key levers of economic control that create and shape the nature of the market that others have to operate within. But this still leaves considerable freedom for others to pursue their own agendas under ‘normal’ circumstances, and to manipulate political agendas to serve local and private economic interests. The chapter also focusses in on domestic Chinese debates over its place in the world, and how studying them can give is a clearer understanding of how China’s place in the world looks from the inside out. In addition to showing how these debates have evolved, the chapter also shows how a consensus of sorts has emerged over what China might (or should) seek to achieve as a global power.