Recent surges in refugee movements have prompted corporate efforts to address this global, grand challenge. However, the multifaceted obstacles faced by refugees, including language barriers, vocational training needs, discrimination, and mental health issues, necessitate tailored support from employers. Despite this imperative, research on workplace support for refugees remains limited. To shed light on why support can be beneficial but also detrimental, this study investigates the perceptions of support needs and the adequacy of support practices among refugee employees and their support providers. Employing a multiperspective approach, the authors conducted 53 semi-structured interviews with refugee employees, supervisors, and colleagues across 25 distinct support relationships. By triangulating their diverse viewpoints, this study reveals patterns of convergence and divergence between perceptions of support needs and practices expressed by support providers and refugee employees. Three distinct workplace support constellations emerge, elucidating how support can empower refugee employees while also revealing instances where well-intended support may inadvertently disempower them and negatively affect their well-being. This research challenges the literature on the support paradox and enriches the emerging research on refugee employment. These insights were implemented in practitioner workshops to provide valuable guidance for designing effective support practices.

I respond to the Call by the EIBA organizers of how we can push the boundaries of our field to make it impactful for the future. Considering the culturally diverse nature of our academic community, an incomparable resource, I propose that to continue to develop important, relevant, and inspiring research, we should open up to more voices from cultural others and encourage more research to be done in multicultural teams. Studies are typically carried out by those who are similar, often in nationality, ethnicity, and spoken language, and work together. However, we know that differing perspectives, knowledge, and experience from diverse cultural backgrounds has the potential to generate extraordinary outcomes in multicultural work settings as cultural diversity is connected to avoidance of group-think, creativity, and innovativeness. I outline and model negative and positive facets of ethnocentrism that could hinder or enable idea-generation, as well as positive and negative aspects of inclusion and inclusive leadership that typically are expected to act as an antidote to ethnocentrism and open up to new voices joining the conversation, but also has negative repercussions. The model is intended to problematize the potential of drawing more substantially on cultural variance in future International Business research.

This paper considers the potential of reflexive contextualization methodologies to support

research addressing some of the grand challenges in international business research.

Whilst discussions on the significance of reflexivity in social science research have taken place in numerous disciplines, it is relatively recent in International Business literature. It is a significant methodological discussion as reflexivity has been characterized as iterative, inclusive, and globally regarded as an indicator of quality in the conduct and reporting of qualitative research that can enhance the societal impact of the field of International Business.

This paper begins by examining the concepts of reflexivity and reflexive contextualization, as used in the literature. It discusses how reflexivity and reflexive contextualization can be relevant for research in IB and the opportunities that reflexive contextualization can present to the researcher in IB. Drawing on empirical examples from fieldwork, the paper looks at how reflexive contextualization can be achieved.

It contributes a framework for qualitative International Business researchers to address their subjectivity and consciously navigate shifting identities, interactions, and the multifaceted context of the research phenomenon.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) is widely considered essential to effective management for the good of the organization, yet it encounters resistance within MNEs. Drawing on evolutionary psychology and archaeology, we examine why EDI—a policy that should be in tune with the natural human predisposition for sharing and caring—is resisted. We discover that the basis for productive collaboration between individuals today is strategic, predicated upon a controlling and holding resource-regulation strategy serving self-interest and personal gain. This is inimical to human evolutionary emotions-based collaboration in which any deviation from EDI was transitory and self-correcting. The now normal unequal rewards and perceived systemic unfairness and injustice within firms is exacerbated within MNEs, which operate internationally under conditions of pronounced and variable inequality, within and between locations. We redirect EDI research from its focus on the pursuit of diversity towards the managerial level, to correct systemic inequities afflicting both diverse and non-diverse. Replacing prevalent dominance-seeking leadership by those meriting leadership through their personal prestige can re-establish the sense of systemic fairness and justice essential to self-regulating EDI—“EDI-Plus”. We argue that this is the only way of organizing firms to achieve genuinely sustainable EDI.