Research on large Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) has been at the core of International Management (IM) since the 1980s, with notable contributions from scholars such as Doz, Prahalad, Hedlund, Bartlett and Ghoshal. Their collaborative efforts shaped our understanding of MNEs in the 20th century. But when in the 21st century, globalization, financialization, new technologies, and a changing geopolitical landscape started to transform MNEs, IB researchers were slow to recognize the magnitude and complexity of the changes in MNE organization and the growing diversity among MNEs. Hence, in 2016 a group of IM researchers gathered in Helsinki to re-focus on the evolving nature of MNEs, debating the need for new approaches and examining how environmental and organizational changes affect MNE structure, value creation and managerial tensions.

Our panel seeks to reconvene some of the key contributors to the 2016 debate to assess the continued relevance for future research on MNEs of the issues and themes that we identified eight years ago, and to discuss whether the changes in the global landscape since that time raise new challenges and themes. Our objective is to contribute to the shaping of a highly relevant and interesting research agenda on MNEs for the future.