Timeline

• July 31, 2024: Full paper submission deadline

Valeria Giacomin, Bocconi University

Youssef Cassis, European University Institute

Jan Logemann, University of Göttingen

Chinmay Tumbe, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad

Cities have long stood at the crossroads of business and globalization. From medieval market towns and colonial entrepôts to industrial metropolises and financial hubs, cities have mediated the flows of goods, capital, people, and ideas that underpin capitalism in the global economy. Urban historians have shown that cities emerged historically as centres of exchange and specialization, often linked to hinterlands through flows of agricultural surplus. Empires and colonial systems further embedded cities into international circuits as ports, administrative hubs, and commercial nodes.

Seminal work in global urban studies presented cities as nodes in world-spanning networks, structuring hierarchies of capital and connectivity. Global history showed how urban elites concentrated wealth, power, and influence, thereby shaping the material foundations and institutional infrastructures of global capitalism. Urban economics further investigated how agglomeration in cities created both opportunities and constraints, with scale economies, dense networks, and rising costs shaping business practices and organizational forms.

Business history has traditionally focused on firms, entrepreneurs, and institutions that expanded across borders, while the urban contexts that enabled and structured these processes have often remained in the background. Rather than serving as passive contexts, cities constituted the institutional and infrastructural foundations of global business. Viewed through the lens of business history, they were arenas in which firms and institutional actors structured, negotiated, and transformed the processes of global capitalism. At the same time, informal and hybrid actors, including bazaar traders, migrant entrepreneurs, and diasporic networks, leveraged urban density and connectivity to embed themselves in global circuits.

Histories of financial centres demonstrate how global cities such as London, Paris, and New York as well as small states or city states such as Singapore, Dubai and Luxembourg developed specialized institutions, practices, and reputations that anchored international finance. Studies of maritime transport and shipping reveal how port cities concentrated shipping companies, dockside services, and logistics infrastructure, making them indispensable to global circulation. Research on manufacturing, construction, and real estate further highlights how urban economies were shaped by industrial production and building enterprises, illustrating the long-term interplay between property markets, urban growth, and business development.

Urban hinterland studies show how the fortunes of firms and industries cannot be understood apart from their urban nodes. Comparative work on international entrepôts such as Singapore, Batavia or Bombay highlights how colonial and imperial cities functioned as organizing points for regional economies within wider global value chains. Expanding on these insights, this special issue invites contributions that engage with cities as business environments in a systematic way. Encouraging a genuinely global comparative perspective, the issue is especially interested in research on regions such as Japan, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America which remain underrepresented in existing scholarship.

By integrating case studies on a broad scope from across world regions and diverse historical periods, the issue seeks to contribute cumulatively to a comparative and theoretically informed understanding of how cities shaped business globalization. In positioning cities as central agents of global capitalism, the issue builds on existing literatures in business, financial, and urban history, seeking to connect and extend these fields through new empirical evidence and cross-regional dialogue. The issue intends to position cities as active, historical agents of globalization in business history.

Potential topics

• Cities as Nodes of Global Finance, Trade and Manufacturing: How did businesses use cities as hubs of commerce, credit, and investment in globalizing economies? What role did stock exchanges, banks, trading houses, and merchant guilds play in embedding global capital within specific urban contexts? How did these institutions transform cities into command points of globalization?
• Cities, Real Estate, and Global Investment: How did property markets and urban real estate development become globalized? From colonial land concessions and foreign-owned plantations to the rise of multinational property firms, how did investment in land and real estate shape the growth, form, and business dynamics of cities? How did flows of capital into real estate, from banks, funds, and transnational investors, transform urban space and embed cities in global financial circuits?
• Urban Infrastructures of Globalization: Ports, warehouses, transport corridors, and communication systems were often financed, managed, or operated by businesses. How did firms shape, invest in, and benefit from urban infrastructures that connected production and consumption across continents? Conversely, how did these infrastructures reshape urban space and labor markets?
• Migration, Informality, and Urban Globalization: How did informal markets, migrant entrepreneurs, and diasporic communities leverage urban density, mobility, and transnational connections to build alternative circuits of trade, credit, and labor that sustained 'globalization from below'? How did these actors navigate, shape, and transform colonial and postcolonial urban systems over time? In what ways did these resilient networks engage with or circumvent formal business institutions, adapting to and contesting existing hierarchies while transforming cities into laboratories of hybrid and transnational economic life?
• Resilient Cities: Crisis, Adaptation, and Environmental Change: How did wars, revolutions, financial crises, pandemics, or deindustrialization reshape urban hierarchies, and why did some cities adapt and recover while others declined? How did firms, investors, and local institutions respond to these ruptures, reconfiguring urban economies and spatial organization? What does a long-term perspective reveal about the intertwined dynamics of crisis, resilience, and ecological transformation in shaping global urban capitalism? How have urban business activities contributed to, and been transformed by, environmental change, from extraction and industrial pollution to pressures for sustainability and climate adaptation?

Timeline

• April 15, 2026: Deadline for extended proposals (800–1000 words)
• November 1, 2026: Full paper submissions through Business History Submission Portal
• September 1, 2027: Final revised papers due

In 2025, record-breaking temperatures, escalating global political unrest, and a looming economic recession have intensified consumer anxiety, increasing pressure and expectations around their purchasing decisions worldwide. As people face these global challenges, they are more frequently choosing sustainable options, which fundamentally transform the connection between consumption and societal well-being. Sustainability is defined as "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". Although often linked to environmental issues, sustainability includes three interrelated dimensions: environmental (the natural world), social (people and communities), and economic (long-term prosperity), commonly referred to as the triple bottom line, or the "3Ps": people, planet, and profit.

This growing consumer focus on sustainability is not merely a preference but a powerful market force. Increasingly, consumers are driving the business case for sustainability by signaling their preferences through purchasing decisions. A survey has shown that 68% of consumers in OECD Member countries are concerned about environmental impact when making purchasing choices. Notably, 80% of consumers are willing to pay an average premium of 9.7% for sustainable products, and products with sustainability-related advertising saw 2.0–8.5% higher sales growth compared to those without such messaging. This trend is especially strong among younger consumers, with 79% of Gen Z and 81% of millennials believing that companies should do more to support sustainable purchasing choices.

Given the growing demand from consumers to advancing sustainability goals, a deep understanding of their responses to sustainability initiatives is essential for firms aiming to contribute to a sustainable society. Prior research has effectively demonstrated that consumer attitudes and behaviors are influenced by both individual characteristics and firms' marketing strategies. Additionally, scholars have explored negative consumer responses, such as skepticism and perceptions of greenwashing. Despite these important contributions, much of this work has been conducted within domestic contexts. Consequently, there is a notable and pressing gap in our understanding of how consumer attitudes and behaviors toward sustainability are shaped across diverse markets and cultures.

This gap is particularly concerning because the global marketplace presents a complex frontier for sustainable consumption, offering opportunities to enrich both scholarly understanding of sustainable consumption and practical approaches to sustainable marketing. Sustainable consumption is closely linked to consumers' values and identities, as well as to the regulations and institutions around them, all of which vary greatly across countries and cultures. For instance, a product message deemed environmentally responsible in one country might be viewed as irrelevant or even wasteful in another. Without addressing these cross-national and cross-cultural differences, a comprehensive understanding of sustainable consumption remains incomplete and fragmented.

Analyzing sustainable consumption in the international context offers valuable insights for both multinational corporations (MNCs) with global influence and for small- and medium-sized firms or exporters operating in developed and developing countries. For instance, products from large MNCs may promise global standards but face skepticism about their local impact, while products from smaller exporters might seem more authentic but lack transparent supply chain information. This complexity is intensified by shifting geopolitical and economic forces, making it profoundly difficult for consumers to verify claims, assess trade-offs, and make choices aligned with their sustainable values. As a result, understanding how consumers navigate this environment is a vital and urgent priority for both marketing scholars and business leaders.

To advance sustainability research from a consumer-centric, international perspective, this special issue invites studies that explore the multifaceted nature of the global sustainable consumer. We particularly encourage submissions that approach this topic from two complementary angles: (1) applying established international marketing concepts to the sustainability domain and (2) extending sustainable consumption theories to the international context.

International marketing researchers might address sustainable consumer behavior through the lens of established theories and constructs, exploring questions such as: How do consumer ethnocentrism and animosity influence evaluations of foreign versus domestic sustainable products? How do consumers' global versus local identities affect their responses to standardized versus locally adapted sustainability campaigns? On the other hand, sustainability researchers could extend theories of sustainable consumption to the complex international domain, investigating questions such as: How do pro-environmental behaviors and their motivations differ between consumers in developed and emerging markets? What cultural values drive the adoption of or resistance to circular economy practices, such as purchasing remanufactured products or using reusable bags? We welcome contributions from both research streams, and especially from those working at their intersection, to illuminate how consumers navigate the challenges and opportunities of sustainable consumption in a globalized world.

The guest editors welcome conceptual, review, and empirical papers that are methodologically rigorous. We are open to a wide array of approaches and are particularly interested in research that can illuminate the complexities of consumers and their sustainable choices in an international context. This may include rich qualitative studies (e.g., in-depth interviews, netnography), insightful quantitative analyses (e.g., cross-cultural surveys, experiments), and multi-method designs. We also encourage submissions that draw on diverse theoretical perspectives to advance our understanding of the global sustainable consumer.

Potential topics

• Consumer Identity and Orientation: How do consumer identities—such as global, local, or cosmopolitan—influence the choice between global sustainable brands and local eco-friendly alternatives?
• Country-of-Origin Effects: How does a product's country of origin interact with its sustainability claims? How do consumers evaluate a "green" product from a country perceived to have a poor environmental or labor record?
• Consumer Ethnocentrism and Animosity: Beyond general product evaluations, how do ethnocentric or animosity-driven tendencies specifically affect consumer receptivity to foreign sustainable innovations or environmental campaigns?
• Global vs. Local Brands: Do consumers place more trust in the sustainability promises of global brands or local brands? How do consumers perceive and respond to local brands that use sustainability as a point of differentiation against multinational competitors?
• Psychic Distance: How does the perceived psychic or cultural distance to a foreign country influence a consumer's engagement with sustainability issues originating from that country (e.g., concern for distant labor practices or environmental disasters)?
• Pro-Environmental Behavior: What are the key cross-cultural drivers of and barriers to pro-environmental behaviors? How do cultural values such as individualism/collectivism, long-term orientation, or uncertainty avoidance explain variations in consumer engagement?
• Circular Economy Practices: What cultural factors facilitate or hinder consumer participation in the circular economy as a customer, user, or end-of-life product holder? How do perceptions of hygiene, ownership, and waste influence the adoption of practices like renting, repairing, or buying secondhand or refurbished/reconditioned products across markets?
• Sustainable Communication and Persuasion: What is the cross-cultural effectiveness of different sustainability appeals (e.g., guilt, hope, social norms) in global advertising? How do consumers in high-context versus low-context cultures interpret green messaging?
• Perceptions of Greenwashing: Are consumers in some cultures more skeptical or adept at detecting corporate greenwashing? How does the level of institutional trust in a country affect consumer perceptions of the credibility of corporate sustainability claims?
• Ethical Consumption Trade-offs: How do consumers in different parts of the world prioritize and navigate trade-offs between different dimensions of sustainability (e.g., choosing between a locally produced product with more packaging versus an imported fair-trade product with a higher carbon footprint)?

Timeline

• January 15, 2026: Special session at 2026 Global Fashion Management Conference submission deadline
• May 15, 2026: Virtual paper workshop registration deadline
• November 1, 2026: Opening date for manuscript submissions
• January 31, 2027: Closing date for manuscript submissions