Sustainable Innovation for a Digital and Globalized World

Call for Papers – Sustainable Innovation for a Digital and Globalized World

Journal: Critical Perspectives on International Business
Publisher: Emerald Publishing
Submission window: 5 January 2026 – 30 April 2026

This special issue calls for critical international‑business research at the intersection of sustainability, innovation, and digitisation, exploring how firms—especially MNEs and SMEs—can (and cannot) innovate for sustainable development in a highly digital and geopolitically fragmented world. It explicitly problematises the “dark sides” of sustainable innovation (e.g., extractive mineral supply chains, digital inequalities, SDG‑washing) and encourages reflexive, interdisciplinary work aligned with the journal’s critical ethos.

Why this issue matters

• After the UN’s 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), many firms have framed “sustainable innovation” as a growth‑enhancing strategy, yet empirical evidence shows that even “green” technologies (such as electric vehicles and AI‑driven platforms) can deepen environmental degradation and social inequality.

• Large‑scale digitisation and platform‑based business models are reshaping work, markets, and power relations, and CPoIB wants to interrogate who benefits and who bears the costs of these transformations.

• The SI explicitly invites IB scholars to move beyond the “business‑case” narrative and critically examine path dependencies, policy limitations, and stakeholder conflicts embedded in global‑sustainability‑innovation projects.

Key topic areas

Papers may address, but are not limited to:

• Innovating for sustainability

  • Novel methods, technologies, and strategies firms use to pursue environmental and social impact.

  • Critical analysis of tensions between “green growth” narratives and the actual distribution of benefits and harms.

• Resource constraints and sustainable development

  • How technological change interacts with finite resource bases (water, land, minerals, biodiversity).

  • Incentive mechanisms for individuals, organisations, and governments to adopt genuinely sustainable behaviours.

• Policy and innovation for sustainability

  • The role of regulation, trade rules, and innovation‑policy ecosystems in enabling or constraining sustainable innovation.

  • System‑level effects of policy mixes on innovation trajectories and equity.

• MNEs, SMEs, and sustainable innovation

  • How MNEs’ size, global reach, and hierarchical structures help or hinder sustainability innovation.

  • How SMEs and platforms respond to sustainability pressures under conditions of de‑globalisation and geopolitical tensions.

• Megatrends shaping the global economy

  • Digital‑transformation strategies that promote a just transition (fair work, inclusive growth, reduced digital divides).

  • Historical and colonial legacies in the diffusion of sustainability and digital‑technology agendas.

Submissions can be conceptual, empirical, or review‑based, as long as they engage critically with the paradoxes of “sustainable innovation” in international business.

Guest editors

• Saneesh Edacherian, University of Birmingham, United Arab Emirates

• Chengang Wang, University of Birmingham, UK

• Linda Hsieh, University of Birmingham, UK

• Stephanie Decker, University of Birmingham, UK

Consulting Editor:

• Mehdi Boussebaa, University of Glasgow, UK

Authors are encouraged to contact the guest editors with informal queries about topic fit or framing.

Submission details

• Submission portal: ScholarOne Manuscripts for CPoIB:
  https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cpoib

• When submitting, select the special issue title “Sustainable Innovation for a Digital and Globalized World” from the dropdown menu.

• Key deadlines:

  • Opening date: 5 January 2026

  • Closing date: 30 April 2026

• Manuscripts must follow the journal’s Author Guidelines:
  https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/cpoib

• Submissions must be original and not under review elsewhere.

Papers selected for the SI should be theoretically grounded, methodologically rigorous, and clearly oriented toward policy, practice, or critical debate in the field of international business and sustainability.

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