Introduction

Since Professor John Cantwell arrived in 2002 to take a leadership role in global business studies at Rutgers Business School (RBS), and joined up with Professor Farok Contractor, a long time stalwart of the field at Rutgers, and some other prominent scholars in areas related to international business, our program has grown through the recruitment of new faculty who have increased the diversity of research excellence at Rutgers and our global connections. Among others, since 2002 Professor Petra Christmann was hired from the Darden School at the University of Virginia, Michelle Gittelman from NYU, Ajai Gaur from Old Dominion University, Virginia, Roger Smeets from the University of Amsterdam, Sinead Monaghan from the University of Limerick and Brett Gilbert from Texas A&M University.
In the past few decades, Ph.D. graduates from our program have been establishing an international community of research by establishing their own unique fields of expertise while retaining a continuing strong tie to their RBS roots. This group form an “invisible college” that enhances the recognition of the academic strength of our program in the global business field. In the US, we have graduates in New Jersey (Yanli Zhang at Montclair State University, Huiping Li at Ramapo College), New York (Cliff Wymbs at CUNY), Virginia (Pooja Thakur at Virginia Tech), California (Ranfeng Qiu at San Bernadino University), and Texas (Feng Zhang at St. Mary's University, San Antonio, Shengsheng Huang at University of Victoria, Houston). Outside the US, we have graduates such as Sarianna Lundan at the University of Bremen in Germany, Rajneesh Narula at the University of Reading in the UK, and Helena Barnard at GIBS in South Africa.
Our presence on the international stage has been influential since the beginning of the program. Four of our faculty members in the international business area have been elected as Academy of International Business (AIB) fellows, including John H. Dunning (also and AIB President), William Dymza, John Cantwell, and Farok Contractor. Two of these have served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS), which is the leading international journal in the field - namely William Dymza and John Cantwell. Three faculty members have served on the executive board of the AIB: John Cantwell, Farok Contractor, and Susan Feinberg.
Our international business program has created a vibrant atmosphere that has made us a point of attraction for visiting scholars working on global business topics. In recent years, we have hosted visiting scholars from the UK, Ireland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Japan, and Brazil.
Once Professor John Cantwell began his position as the Editor-in-Chief of JIBS in 2011, we have also been hosting an annual JIBS editors’ meeting each January in Rutgers-Newark. In addition to this, Professor Petra Christmann has been organizing (with John Cantwell) the JIBS PDW session at the AIB annual meetings. <JIBS editorial website>