Embracing IB’s Dynamism at AIB 2024: A Welcome Letter from AIB President Peter Liesch

Dear AIB Colleagues,
It is both a pleasure and an honor to welcome you to this Annual Meeting of the Academy of International Business.  How good is it to be gathering in Seoul in 2024!
Our theme for this Annual Meeting, proposed by our Program Chair, Professor Catherine Welch from Trinity College, Dublin, is appropriately, The Dynamics of International Business.   With much happening in our world, from geopolitical tensions to rapid and relentless technological change, from climate change and energy transitions to widespread cross-border migration of peoples and economic developments post-COVID, the one constant is dynamics.
As the Call for Papers for this meeting relays, this is the context in which contemporary international business must be studied.   To achieve the mission we have set for ourselves as an Academy, we must have in our toolkits the conceptual, methodological, and theoretical means to make sense of this dynamism.  Our 2024 Annual Meeting aims to demonstrate to our membership and the global IB community how we approach the challenges, turbulence, and transitions that have come to characterize our field of research.
We selected Seoul, South Korea as the location of this meeting in recognition of this city’s status as a hub of the very dynamism I have been referring to. Seoul is a world city brimming with history and antiquity, with modernity and innovativeness, with firms at the frontier of technological excellence. It is also uniquely situated within a region of geopolitical tension and strategic prominence. Seoul is a city many of us will be visiting for the first time, a place where international business comes to life.
The ability to function dynamically has proven to be one of AIB’s greatest strengths: Our regional chapters have given the association broad, global reach while our Shared Interest Groups have helped members concentrate their efforts on specific areas of IB research and practice.  Our journals provide vehicles for scholars to present their latest discoveries while also serving as repositories of our academic heritage.  We are a busy place with many, many persons offering their time, wisdom, and worldliness for the common good.
This busy-ness will be in full evidence at our 2024 Annual Meeting in Seoul. There will be a full Pre-Conference Program of workshops, masterclasses, consortia and welcome events. The main Conference Program will include plenaries, receptions, special sessions, panels, competitive and interactive sessions, and plenty of occasions for social interaction with both new and long-time members.
AIB 2024 Seoul would not have been possible without the generous service of our members. In particular, I would like to thank Professors Catherine Welch and Srilata Zaheer for their tireless efforts in coordinating the Conference and Pre-Conference Programs. Thanks also to our unwavering, ever-present, and professional Executive Director, Tunga Kiyak, and his team in the AIB Secretariat for using their exceptional knowledge and skills to bring together this world-class event. I would also like to express my gratitude to the Local Organizing Committee under the guidance of Professor Geon-Cheol Shin from our 2024 Host Institution Kyung Hee University.
The Academy of International Business last held its Annual Meeting in Seoul in 1995 .  Over the decades since then, South Korea has evolved into a uniquely modern economic powerhouse. South Korea may be seen as emblematic of the dynamism in our modern world, particularly in matters related to International Business. AIB 2024 Seoul promises to be an event in which the reality of these dynamics is on vivid display. It remains for us as scholars to take from this Annual Meeting knowledge, incentive, and motivation to grapple with the challenges we face to bring such dynamism more strongly into our scholarly frames for the benefit of our society.

Sincerely,


Peter W. Liesch


AIB President, 2023-2024




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