Article International Business Research and the International Business Research and the World Investment Report World Investment Report: “Big : “Big Questions” and Grand Challenges Questions” and Grand Challenges Peter J. Buckley 1 1 University of Leeds, UK Keywords: multinational enterprises, global economy, development, foreign direct investment, grand challenges 10.46697/001c.17987 AIB Insights The World Investment Report (WIR) has sought “Big Questions” rather than Grand Challenges and has been entirely successful in mirroring the focus of international business (IB) research. It has not, however, focused on “Grand Challenges” deeming them to be beyond its remit, or too broad for a single report. There is no shortage of potential topics for future WIRs, building on past success and extant IB research. INTRODUCTION This piece argues that the World Investment Report (WIR) has sought “Big Questions” rather than Grand Challenges and has been entirely successful in mirroring the focus of international business (IB) research. It has not, however, fo- cused on “Grand Challenges,” deeming them to be beyond its remit, or too broad for a single report. The distinction between big questions and Grand Challenges is that big questions are framed in an academic agenda to be answered by careful investigation, whereas Grand Challenges come from the environment, do not necessarily have “answers”, and are not easy to encompass even within a multi-disci- plinary explanatory framework. These are societal, not aca- demic challenges. Nevertheless these can be confronted by academic practices: theory, theory testing, and exploratory methods (Buckley, Doh, & Benischke, 2017). This piece ex- amines the 30 years of WIRs and examines the big questions that it has confronted – largely successfully. It then goes on to look at Grand Challenges that have only been partially confronted by WIR. The rise in Volatility, Uncertainty, Com- plexity and Ambiguity (VUCA) in the global economy and the increasingly fractured international economy and soci- ety into rival “camps” are new issues that will complicate the content of future WIRs as well as having a profound im- pact on international business in general. THE WORLD INVESTMENT REPORT AT 30 The 30 volumes of WIR are a rich treasure trove of IB ap- plied theory and policy-based empirical work. They have re- lied on leading IB academics for guidance on topics and im- plementation. A key infuence for the frst 20 years was John Dunning of the University of Reading. Dunning was a mem- ber of the “Eminent Person’s Committee” who envisaged WIR and steered it as it became an annual publication and the key source of FDI data. It has to be remembered that WIR, and UNCTAD, operate under political constraints (and restraints). This means that not all projects that academics champion are politically fea- sible as special topics for WIR. Among these are corruption, tax evasion and probably the Chinese Belt and Road Initia- tive. This is likely to be an increasingly serious issue in the future with the increasing fracture of the global economy under pressure from competing US and Chinese ambitions. Nevertheless, the WIR has been able to tackle a number of big questions over the past 30 years. These issues have been identifed by academic research in the main and so the history of WIR tracks the progress of international business research. “BIG QUESTIONS” WIR has been unafraid of tackling big questions, often be- fore any frm resolution of the underlying academic en- quiry, which makes some WIRs at the cutting edge of not only policy, but also international business research itself. The resolute focus of WIRs on development means that the external effects of MNEs are often to the fore in WIRs rather than the sometimes inward-looking research on “strategy”. What follows is a necessarily abbreviated analysis of the big questions that WIR has tackled. The analysis builds on Buckley (2002) and Buckley et al. (2017). 1. EXPLAINING FLOWS OF FDI. Early international business research was concerned with the nature, amount and directionality of FDI fows and its home country provenance. WIR has refected this through- out its existence and the frst WIR consolidated this re- search by concentrating on the Triad within which most source countries of FDI then existed –North America, Eu- rope and Asia (then predominantly Japan) {WIR: 1991 The Triad in Foreign Direct Investment} 2. EXPLAINING THE EXISTENCE, STRATEGY AND ORGANISATION OF MNES. The focus of international business research moved rapidly from FDI fows to the organisation that controlled such fows – the multinational enterprise. WIR recognised the development impact of MNEs in its reports of 1992 and 1993, the employment implications of strategic decisions of MNEs and the importance of M&As that have frequently ac- counted for 60% of total world fows of FDI. {WIRs: 1992 Transnational Corporations as Engines of Growth; 1993 Transnational Corporations and Integrated international Production; 1994 Transnational Corpora- tions, Employment and the Workplace; 2000 Cross-border Mergers and Acquisitions} Buckley, P. J. n.d. International Business Research and the World Investment Report: “Big Questions” and Grand Challenges. AIB Insights AIB Insights.