Grazia Santangelo
EIBA President 2007

CONFERENCE THEME, PROGRAMME, PAPERS

The 2007 conference theme was “International Business, Local Development and Science-Technology Relationships”. This theme invited reflection on the opportunities these linkages may offer to both multinationals and local governments in the context of globalisation of productions and R&D.

The conference was organized during 3 full days. The first day, Thursday December 13, the EIBA Doctoral Tutorial was held.

The opening plenary session, scheduled on Thursday, December 13, addressed the main conference theme in the presence of Maryann Feldman Miller Distinguished Professor of Higher Education at the University of Georgia (USA) and Gaetano Casalaina (Public Affairs Director – Indesit Company).

The first plenary session, chaired by Danny Van Den Bulcke (University of Antwerp - Belgium), was dedicated to “The Eclectic Theory, the Multinational Enterprise and the Global Economy: John Dunning’s Magnum Opus” counting on the participation of Farok Contractor (University of Rutgers – USA), John Dunning (Universities of Reading – UK – and Rutgers – USA), Sarianna Lundan (Maastricht University – The Netherlands), Robert Pearce (University of Reading – UK) and Alain Verbeke (University of Calgary - Canada).

The second plenary session was the EIBA Fellows session chaired by Klaus Macharzina (University of Hohenheim – Germany) on International Corporate Governance with the participation of Shirley Daniel (University of Hawaii – USA), Lars Oxelheim (Lund University – Sweden) and Marjan Svetlicic (University of Ljubljana - Slovenia).

In the third plenary session, the four finalists of the Gunnar Hedlund Award, Seiko Arai, Chris Changwha Chung (The University of Western Ontario, USA - Now at Florida International University), Alex Eapen (Tilburg Univesity, The Netherlands) and Sabina Tacheva (Sabina Tacheva, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland - Now at Copenhagen Business School) presented their work.

Two special panel sessions were also organized by UNCTAD on the World Investment Report 2007: Transnational Corporations, Extractive Industries and Development (including Ernst Christophe, Peter Buckley, Danny Van Den Bulcke and Robert Pearce) and on The World Investment Report: A critical assessment of the data and statistics (including Masataka Fujita, John Dunning, Axele Giroud, Roger Strange, Ana Teresa Tavares). A further special panel session was organized and chaired by Karl P. Sauvant on Is a backlash against FDI in the making?, with the participation of Peter J. Buckley, John Dunning and DeAnne Julius.

A total of 301 panels and papers were submitted divided in 10 tracks of which 239 were accepted after a peer review process (see Table 1). The track that was most successful in attracting papers was on “International Corporate Strategies” with 69 papers followed by the track on “Management, Organisation and Cultural Issues” with 55 submitted papers. These two tracks had respectively 55 and 44 accepted papers. A less attended track was on “International business and finance” for which only 8 papers were submitted.

For the first time, panel proposals had to undergo a review process like the papers. All submitted panels were encouraged to be organized with two panellists arguing for one viewpoint on the proposed theme and two other panellists arguing for the opposite viewpoint, and with the Panel Chair acting as the moderator.

The submission and review process was facilitated once again by the electronic system used already in Oslo and Fribourg. 240 colleagues signed up as reviewers, all of them using the electronic system.

Table 1: Distribution of the accepted papers (Catania 2007)

Tracks *	Nr Competitive	Nr Workshop	Total per track
Track 1	4	5	11
Track 2	21	11	32
Track 3	14	4	18
Track 4	13	15	44
Track 5	27	23	55
Track 6	10	8	18
Track 7	8	11	21
Track 8	3	1	6
Track 9	7	9	16
Track 10	11	4	18
Total	118	91	239

* Track 1: International Business and Science-Technology Relationships; Track 2: International Business and Local Development; Track 3: Theory of MNCs; Track 4: Management, Organisation and Cultural Issues; Track 5: International Corporate Strategies; Track 6: Corporate R&D and Knowledge Transfer; Track 7: Corporate R&D and Knowledge Transfer; Track 8: Corporate Governance, Ethics and Sustainable Development; Track 9: Economic Policy Issues; Track 10: International Business and International Marketing.

SOCIAL EVENTS
Thursday, December 13: Welcome buffet at the Faculty of Political Science Library; Friday, December 14: Lunch at the Faculty of Political Science Library; dinner at Grand Hotel Excelsior; Saturday, December 15: Lunch at the Faculty of Political Science Library; Gala dinner at Palazzo Biscari.

ACCOMPANYING PERSONS PROGRAMME
A programme for the accompanying persons was also offered for December 14 and 15, 2007. The first day two walking tours were organized in Catania’s historical city centre, while on the second day a trip to the city of Taormina was organized, which is best known for its Greek Roman theatre.

PARTICIPANTS
The total number of participants was of 321, of which 296 were registered participants, the remaining were accompanying persons and conference guests. This number does not include the organizers and local staff. The geographical distribution of the registered participants is shown in Table 2. Registration was handled through EIASM.

Table 2: Distribution of registered participants per country

Country	Nr registered participants	Country	Nr registered participants
Australia	5	Israel	4
Austria	10	Italy	18
Belgium	5	Japan	3
Brazil	5	Netherlands	13
Canada	2	New Zealand	4
Czech Republic	4	Norway	18
Denmark	14	Poland	9
Estonia	3	Portugal	8
Finland	22	Slovenia	3
France	7	Spain	11
Germany	26	Sweden	16
Greece	4	Switzerland	5
Hungary	1	United Kingdom	55
Iceland	1	United States	16
Ireland	4
Nr countries represented			29
Total nr registered participants			296

Given the rather severe reviewing process, the conference was well attended with almost 300 participants.

PUBLISHERS
Seven publishers exhibited their most recent books and journals during the conference: i.e. Copenhagen Business School Press, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, Elsevier B.V., Oxford University Press (only stand), Palgrave Macmillan, SAGE Publications, and Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.

PRIZES
Seven prizes were awarded during the Gala dinner on Saturday, December 15 as summarized in the table in the list of the awards under the item Catania Awards 2007 in this newsletter (see further).

DISSEMINATION/ADVERTISEMENT
The conference was advertised in academic fora, such as the AIB Newsletter and several national and international mailing lists. it was also posted in several web sites.
The Conference was well covered by the media: articles were published in daily newspapers and the University bulletin, dispatches were sent to several press agencies and an interview on the opening day of the conference was shown on the local TV news.

POST-CONFERENCE
After the conference, a photo-gallery was created on line as a special section of the conference website, where pictures of the 3 day event were posted on. (http://www.fscpo.unict.it/eiba2007/gallery.htm)