Speaker: Dr Kieran Conroy
Title: Driving Digital Sustainability in Global Value Chains: Multinational Enterprises as Chief Orchestrators
Date: Thursday, 10 Oct 2024
Time: 4:00pm – 5:00pm
Venue: Building 24, Room 1106, RSM Seminar Room
Israr Qureshi is the host of this visitor
Abstract: Digital sustainability has the potential to transform how multinational enterprises (MNEs) capture, create and distribute value in their global value chains (GVCs). Yet, a real problem persists in understanding how MNEs drive digital sustainability across their GVCs. This is a complex and evolving process that requires MNEs to coordinate with and collaborate across a multiplicity of globally dispersed partners. Adopting an orchestration perspective, our paper constructs a novel take on digital sustainability in several ways. First, we reimagine the role of MNEs as ‘chief orchestrators’ in GVCs, driving digital sustainability through orchestration activities underpinning coordination and collaboration, which in turn generates opportunities for value capture and creation along the GVC. Second, we disentangle the impact of MNE-driven digital sustainability, unpacking the undesired consequences for GVC partners relating to dependency, power dynamics, transparency and supplier squeeze or exclusion. Our insights temper claims about the transformative potential of digital sustainability, challenging scholars, practitioners and policymakers to reflect on and respond to the double-edged effects of MNE-driven digital sustainability in GVCs. Our arguments are demonstrated through three illustrative cases from firms across industries (agriculture, energy and fast-moving consumer goods). We identify implications for management practice and policy and offer guideposts for future research.
Bio: Kieran Conroy is a Reader in International Business at Queen’s Business School, Queen’s University Belfast. He has been a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Business School and has previously held visiting appointments at La Rochelle Business School, France. His research interests focus on international management and global strategy, particularly the evolution of corporate strategies and global leadership in multinationals. Central themes focus on headquarter-subsidiary relationships, global mobility flows, knowledge coordination, and global human capital development. He is a British Academy Mid-Career Fellow, and the British Academy of Management has also funded his research. His work has been published or is forthcoming in leading international outlets such as the Academy of Management Perspectives, Global Strategy Journal, Journal of World Business, and Human Resource Management Journal, among others. He sits on several editorial boards including, the Academy of Management Perspectives, Global Strategy Journal, and Journal of World Business.