The social value creation of MNEs – a literature review across multiple academic fields

Purpose This study aims to investigate how different academic fields within and outside of international business (IB) engage with the topics of social value creation in the context of multinational enterprises (MNEs). The aim is to take stock of the main themes and offer suggestions for future research avenues. Design/methodology/approach The paper undertakes a scoping review. The authors use the Web of Science database to identify relevant articles. The database search yielded 466 articles. The NVivo software was used to code and identify key thematic areas. Findings The matrix analysis performed in NVivo yielded 15 main thematic areas spanning 37 research fields. However, further analysis revealed that 89 per cent of the articles originated from 13 fields. Furthermore, while IB journals represent the second-largest field home to publications related to the social value creation of MNEs, they only account for 12 per cent of the sample. Originality/value The paper responds to prior calls to reduce disciplinary silos through the performing of a thematic analysis across a multitude of research fields.

• Publication year

  2019

• Venue

  Critical Perspectives on International Business

• Publication date

  2019-08-12

• Fields of study

  Sociology, Business, Economics

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1108/CPOIB-06-2017-0038
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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