Michele Acciaro, Copenhagen Business School

Martin Jes Iversen, Copenhagen Business School

Ioannis Lagoudis, University of Piraeus

Iryna Savelieva, Odesa National Maritime University

Dong Yang, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Kum Fai Yuen, Nanyang Technological University

Critical infrastructure (CI) systems, such as energy, transportation, telecommunications, and water, form the backbone of modern economies. These systems face unprecedented challenges from technological disruptions, geopolitical tensions, environmental pressures, and evolving security threats, from cyber-attacks and supply chain vulnerabilities to climate impacts. Virtually no firm can consider itself independent from CI, as infrastructure disruptions cascade through supply chains, energy failures halt production, and transportation bottlenecks constrain competitiveness.

The deep interconnection between innovation and security, conceptualized as the 'security-innovation nexus', has emerged as a defining feature of contemporary political economy. Understanding CI security innovation requires engaging with complex interdependencies where technological capabilities, industrial structures, geopolitical strategies, and security co-evolve. Innovation systems frameworks offer powerful analytical lenses for this purpose, yet CI systems remain relatively understudied within innovation studies despite their strategic importance.

The integration of innovation and security objectives presents important governance challenges. Poorly designed security governance can undermine innovation by fragmenting knowledge networks, while innovation without security governance increases systemic fragility. These tensions manifest across multiple levels: at the firm level, companies must balance security investment with innovation focus; at the sectoral level, CI operators must coordinate heterogeneous actors; at the policy level, governments must manage trade-offs between openness and security controls.

These tensions also generate pressing ethical dilemmas, most visibly around dual-use technologies whose civilian and security applications cannot be cleanly separated. Such dilemmas place renewed demands on corporate responsibility, responsible innovation, and on assessments of the social value created—or eroded—by security-oriented technological change in CI sectors.

Recent geopolitical developments, including the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-US war on Iran, the US-China technology competition, and strategic contests over semiconductors, critical raw materials, and telecommunications infrastructure, have heightened the urgency of this research agenda. Critical raw materials have emerged as a key concern especially in relation to green technology transitions, with implications spanning from renewable energy infrastructure to shipbuilding and defence industries. Digital transformation across CI sectors, including autonomous systems, AI, IoT, and cyber-physical systems, is simultaneously reshaping capabilities and creating new vulnerabilities. High-profile cybersecurity incidents in energy, transportation, and telecommunications networks demonstrate how cyber resilience has become a core dimension of infrastructure security.

From an organizational perspective, security concerns in CI create innovation opportunities for dependent firms while reshaping CI provision itself. Firms perceiving infrastructure vulnerabilities, e.g., geopolitical risks threatening supply chains, cybersecurity threats to networks, or climate impacts on energy grids, develop organizational innovations to reduce dependency and enhance resilience. Importantly, these innovations frequently diffuse back into CI sectors and adjacent industries, constituting a bidirectional dynamic that remains a crucial but understudied dimension of CI innovation.

Potential topics

• Innovation Systems, Governance, and Geopolitics - Technological Innovation Systems (TIS) approach for CI security and how security-focused innovation systems emerge and evolve
• Innovation Systems, Governance, and Geopolitics - Sectoral and technological innovation systems in CI security, knowledge bases, and actor networks
• Innovation Systems, Governance, and Geopolitics - Regulatory innovation and multi-level governance approaches balancing security, safety, and economic efficiency
• Innovation Systems, Governance, and Geopolitics - Geopolitical competition, technology sovereignty, and industrial policy effects on CI innovation systems
• Firm Strategies, Organizational Innovation, and Resilience - Organizational innovation and adaptation in response to CI system vulnerabilities
• Firm Strategies, Organizational Innovation, and Resilience - Firm strategies, organizational innovation, and business models for infrastructure security
• Firm Strategies, Organizational Innovation, and Resilience - Resilience, supply chain security, and infrastructure interdependencies
• Digital Transformation, Sustainability Transitions, and Human Factors - Digital transformation, automation, and cybersecurity in critical infrastructure
• Digital Transformation, Sustainability Transitions, and Human Factors - Sustainability transitions and the security-environment nexus
• Digital Transformation, Sustainability Transitions, and Human Factors - Socio-technical transitions, ethics, and human factors in CI sectors
• Multi-Level Transitions and Sectoral Applications - Multi-level dynamics of transitions with focus on critical infrastructure
• Multi-Level Transitions and Sectoral Applications - Sectoral applications including energy, transportation, telecommunications, water, financial systems, healthcare, and space infrastructure

Timeline

• Invalid DateTime: Publication of the special issue
• December 15, 2026: Submission opens
• January 31, 2027: Submissions due

Escalating geopolitical tensions have become a defining feature of the contemporary international business environment. Recent scholarship has examined how firms cope with geopolitical uncertainty, focusing on organizational resilience, employee motivation in hostile contexts, and strategic deployment of human resources under conditions of conflict and instability. However, this work has largely overlooked one of the most profound consequences of geopolitical crises: large-scale, crisis-induced migration and the resulting global reconfiguration of human capital.

The wars and confrontations of the past five years, including conflicts involving Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, and Iran and the United States, have triggered unprecedented movements of people across borders. Geopolitical migration fundamentally differs from economic migration. It is often sudden, unplanned, and driven by acute security, political, or environmental threats rather than long-term opportunity seeking. As populations flee conflict zones, countries of origin experience significant human capital losses, while host countries confront challenges and opportunities associated with absorbing inflows of displaced and often highly skilled individuals. Geopolitical crises accelerate the global redistribution and consolidation of human capital, with long-lasting implications for firms, labor markets, and national development trajectories.

International business and related literatures have increasingly addressed migration from macro, meso, and micro perspectives, examining economic consequences, patterns of brain drain and brain gain, return migration, human capital accumulation, and immigrant adjustment across diverse groups. Important contributions have also explored state policies, diaspora dynamics, human rights, and shifting global migration routes. However, this body of work has predominantly focused on migration that unfolds under relatively stable institutional conditions. Much less is known about migration triggered by geopolitical crises characterized by uncertainty, institutional disruption, and limited capacity for strategic planning by governments, firms, and individuals.

Firms are directly affected by abrupt changes in the availability, composition, and mobility of human capital, both in crisis-affected home countries and in recipient economies. Yet, firm-level theorizing and empirical evidence on how organizations respond to, shape, and are transformed by geopolitical crisis-induced migration remain underdeveloped. International business scholarship has paid surprisingly limited attention to how migration driven by war and geopolitical disruption reshapes firm strategies, human resource practices, and competitive outcomes.

This Special Issue seeks to address this gap by placing firms at the center of analysis and examining migration as a contextual, crisis-specific phenomenon. We invite contributions that explore how firms cope with human capital outflows, leverage inflows of displaced talent, adapt human resource management and organizational practices, and interact with states and societies under conditions of geopolitical instability. By integrating insights on geopolitics, migration, and firm behavior, this Special Issue aims to advance a more nuanced and timely understanding of how business operates in an era of persistent conflict and forced mobility.

Potential topics

• Geopolitics as setting for migration - Do different geopolitical crises create unique migration contexts and consequences for organizations? How does the emergence of geopolitical migrants shape global migration flows, migration state policies, and firms' acquisition strategies? Do different geopolitical crises create different firm-level challenges and diverse organizational responses? How does geopolitical migration reshape the institutional environment for local and multinational companies? How do local businesses receiving geopolitical migrants tackle enormous migration flows resulting from wars and sudden instabilities? What capabilities are critical for companies to overcome migration challenges and create advantages with geopolitical migrants as a talent pool?
• Geopolitical migrants and diaspora groups - How may local organizations benefit from diverse geopolitical migrant groups? How do geopolitical migrants differ from other migrant groups in employment motives and cultural adjustment capabilities? What are the effects of diaspora expansion in host countries due to geopolitical migration? How have diasporas remained connected to home contexts and what effects emerge for home countries from geopolitical talent outflows? Can brain drain be turned into brain gain if migrants remain engaged in home country processes? To what extent and under what institutional conditions may geopolitical migrants reshape global and local labor markets?
• Migration restrictions and implications for local and international business players - Are migration restriction policies beneficial to local firms? Do nationalistic frictions that restrict migration protect economic interests or create barriers to human capital accumulation? How does institutional context influence organizational cultures and policies affecting migrant integration? How does perception of geopolitical conflict fairness influence state migration policies and migrant labor market inclusion? To what extent do migration restriction policies stimulate recirculation of geopolitical migrants? How does populism influence migration policies and state initiatives? How are different political regimes and varieties of capitalism connected to migration restrictions?
• Location choices and directions of migration flows - Does geographical proximity moderate geopolitical migration? How do historical relations between countries determine geopolitical migration flows and affect adjustment? How do multinational companies decide internationalization strategies considering migration flows? How do geopolitical migrants choose destinations? Which country-specific characteristics are perceived as attractive pull factors for geopolitical migrants?

Timeline

• January 6, 2027: Opening date for manuscripts submissions
• August 31, 2027: Closing date for manuscripts submission