The AIB 2002 Program Committee has lined up an impressive program for you at the Caribe Hilton in San Juan, Puerto Rico, June 28-July 1, 2002. The theme for this year’s conference is Geographies and International Business. I want to tell you a bit about what we have planned and invite you to come make this the best meetings yet!

In terms of pre-conference activities, we will hold Doctoral and Junior Faculty Consortiums all day Friday, June 28. Witold Henisz (Wharton) and Joanne Oxley (Michigan) are the two consortia chairs. Lloyd Russow (Philadelphia) has organized a Meet the Editors roundtable for the consortium participants, on Friday afternoon, where they will have the opportunity to interact with editors of major international business journals.

Three ever-popular Poster Sessions will be held this year, Saturday and Sunday (both with lunch) and Monday (with wine & cheese). Doctoral consortium students have a special invitation to submit a paper for review by the consortium chair, with accepted papers being presented in a special "Doctoral Consortium Row" in the Saturday Poster Session. We hope this new feature, together with the Placement Services Center, will provide multiple opportunities for AIB faculty and students to interact.

The formal activities of the conference begin Friday at 4:30 with an Opening Plenary, chaired by Paul LaTortue (University of Puerto Rico) on Geography, Trading Blocs and Investment in the Caribbean Space. The plenary is designed to acquaint AIB members with key international business and public policy issues in the Caribbean and Latin America, as seen from the perspective of distinguished scholars and policy makers. The plenary will be followed by the Presidential Reception, always a popular event!

Saturday, June 29, opens with the Conference Theme Plenary. Participants include AIB members John Dunning (Reading), Steve Kobrin (Wharton) and Michael Enright (University of Hong Kong), with special guest, urban geographer Allen Scott (UCLA). We will be discussing interactions between geography and international business, focusing on topics such as clustering, cyberspace and the new Hollywood. Two other special plenary sessions are planned. The first plenary, the Fellows Panel on Sunday organized by Julian Birkinshaw (London Business School), honors John Stopford (London Business School) and Louis Wells (Harvard) for their long contributions to international business research and teaching. The second plenary, organized by Bernard Yeung (New York University), on Monday, honors Peter Buckley (Leeds) and Mark Casson (Reading) for their classic book, The Future of the Multinational Enterprise.

Several economic geographers are coming to participate in the meetings and are looking forward to sharing their leading-edge research with AIB members, for example, Tetsuo Abo (Teikyo University), Maryann Feldman (Johns Hopkins), John Holmes (Queens), Martin Kenney (University of California-Davis) and Sharmistha Bagchi-Sen (State University of New York-Buffalo). Keith Maskus (University of Colorado-Boulder and the World Bank) and Monty Graham (Institute for International Economics) will also be joining us. Martin Kenney (University of California-Davis) and Tom Murtha (Minnesota) have organized an excellent session, looking at the Sloan industry studies on globalization. Some of the other sessions related to the conference theme include: clustering in high-tech industries, MNE location strategies, regional integration, cultural distance, global e-commerce and global sourcing. Clustering within firms is also a hot topic with several sessions focusing, for example, on joint ventures, networks, strategic alliances and cross-cultural teams.

Particular regions of the world are also highlighted: small open economies, transition economies, Asia …and, not surprisingly, the Caribbean and Latin America. This year’s meetings are the first in which we share sessions with BALAS, the Business Association of Latin American Studies. Joseph Ganitsky has organized three sessions on Latin American business strategies, financial issues, and the Argentine currency crisis. BALAS members will be coming to our conference, and AIB members are encouraged to attend the BALAS sessions.

Several sessions push the edge in IB theory. The track chairs assembled the very best papers in their particular tracks into Competitive sessions; slightly less polished papers appear in Workshop sessions. Anil Gupta (Maryland) has organized a thought-provoking session on the future of the multinational enterprise, and Tailan Chi (Illinois) on incorporating real options theory in IB research. Bob Hoskisson (Oklahoma) has put together an interactive panel on new research into restructuring business groups in emerging markets.

This year, Ray Mataloni (US Bureau of Economic Analysis), has been invited to lead a special interactive workshop on FDI data, bringing together consumers and producers of FDI data to talk about "what’s in, what’s out, what’s hot, what’s not". Another session that is sure to attract interest is a panel discussion, organized by Llewellyn Howell (Hawaii) on political risk and terrorism post-9/11. Reid Click (George Washington University) has organized a session in memory of Stephen Guisinger (University of Texas-Dallas) on multinationality, efficiency and firm value. These are some of the many, many sessions that this year’s program will offer you in Puerto Rico.

Several awards will be given at the meetings also. Five papers have been nominated for the Haynes Prize, for the best paper written by an author or authors under 40 years of age; the authors are Protiti Dastidar (George Washington University), Andrew Delios (National University of Singapore) and Shige Makino (Chinese University of Hong Kong), Li Guoqiang (National University of Singapore), Witold Henisz (Wharton) and Jeff Macher (Georgetown), and Bo Nielsen (University of Washington). The winning paper will be announced at Monday’s Awards and Recognition Luncheon. Other closely watched awards include the Farmer Dissertation Award and the AIB Executive-of-the-Year.

I would like to thank all the people who submitted paper and panel proposals in December, who reviewed them in January, and who are on the program in a variety of roles as paper givers, panelists, chairs and discussants. Thank-you for your time and efforts on behalf of the Academy of International Business!

Looking forward to seeing you in Puerto Rico,