Dear Colleagues,

As President of EIBA, I am delighted to welcome you to the 35th EIBA Annual Conference hosted by the Faculty of Economics at the University of Valencia, Spain from the 13th to the 15th of December 2009.

This year’s conference theme is “Reshaping the boundaries of the firm in an era of global interdependence”. Boundaries of the firm are increasingly porous. Questions such as which activities should be conducted “inside” or “outside” the firm, which activities should be done “local” or “abroad” and which activities should be done “alone” or with “other” firms have become urgent in today’s business context. New organizational forms, such as inter-firm networks, global strategic alliances, alliances with NGOs, cross-border mergers and acquisitions, franchising organizations, offshoring/outsourcing structures, international new ventures, international entrepreneurs and on-line communities, frame a broader picture and force researchers towards a new reconceptualization of the role and scope of international firms in this era of global connectivity. New thinking concerning the ways in which these international firms configure themselves internally to coordinate and control their different units and develop organizational learning capabilities extend the reach of previous more traditional research. Moreover, the manner by which these firms interact with their local environment and the perceived social and environmental consequences of their actions force a much more complex set of relationships across firms, governments and societies.

We are extremely proud of the response to the Call for papers, as we received 408 submissions, most probably the highest number in the history of EIBA’s annual conferences. The selection of the submitted proposals and the organization of the reviewing process was a challenging task requiring a tremendous amount of work by the track chairsleaders. Therefore, express our special gratitude to Gabriel R. G. Benito (BI-Norwegian School of Management), Esther Sánchez-Peinado (University of Valencia), Ulf Andersson (Copenhagen Business School), Alex Rialp (Autonomous University of Barcelona), Bent Petersen (Copenhagen Business School), Jaime Bonache (Cranfield Management School), Ram Mudambi (Temple University), Esteban Garcia-Canal. (University of Oviedo), Rebecca Piekkari (Helsinki School of Economics) and Xose H. Vázquez (University of Vigo).

During the first day of the conference we will have the doctoral tutorial and a plenary session as a tribute to John Dunning and dedicated to his International Business legacy. This session will feature six distinguished IB scholars including Klaus Macharzina and Danny Van Den Buckley as co-chairs, John Cantwell, Peter Buckley, Sarianna Lundan and Seev Hirsch. A second plenary session, organised by Danny Van Den Bulckly, will be held in honour of Prof. Yves Doz. This session will discuss one of the main issues of this year’s theme: Strategic Alliances and Strategic Control in Multinational Enterprises. Five prominent scholars will take part: Yvez Doz, Mats Forsgren, John Hagedoorn, Torben Pedersen and Alain Verbeke. Two interesting semi-plenary sessions will be organised by Örjan Sölvell and Juan J. Durán to cover respectively new research and practical topics. During the Gunnar Hedlund award session the shortlisted students will present their doctoral thesis. The more practical session will deal with the experience of some leading Spanish Multinationals. Together with these plenary and semi plenary sessions, the presentation of 278 interesting papers have been selected for presentation from the more than four hundred submitted ones. The core of the conference will configure 146 competitive papers and 132 workshop papers. There also are sixty posters.

The venue of the conference will be ADEIT (Fundación Universidad-Empresa), located in the heart of Valencia's historic downtown. For further details on the academic and social conference program, accommodation and other practical information please visit the conference web page at www.adeit.uv.es/eiba09/ . The conference website will be regularly updated.

With your help, we aim to organise an academically and socially successful EIBA conference.

Looking forward to seeing you in Valencia, I remain with very best regards.

José Pla-Barber
Professor, EIBA President 2009