Phenomenon-Driven Topic Selection (jibs-topic-selection)

When to trigger

• You have an idea or a dataset but are unsure it is a real international-business question
• Your sample is one country and you are not sure that qualifies as IB
• You can describe a finding but not the cross-border phenomenon behind it
• You are deciding between JIBS and an adjacent journal (AMJ, SMJ, JWB, GSJ, MIR)

The JIBS fit test

JIBS is distinctively phenomenon-based. Its Statement of Editorial Policy seeks "insightful and innovative" research on real-world international-business problems, and the journal explicitly discourages incremental extensions. Before anything else, your topic must pass four gates:

1. Phenomenon gate. Name a concrete cross-border, multi-country, or global phenomenon, problem, or puzzle (e.g., an MNE entry-mode choice, a subsidiary-HQ tension, a cross-cultural negotiation outcome, a de-globalization shock). If you can only name a "gap," you do not yet have a JIBS topic.
2. Level-of-analysis gate. JIBS treats country and culture as levels of analysis, not as control variables. State whether your effect lives at the individual, firm/subsidiary, or country level — and where the cross-level action is.
3. IB-theory gate. State what new thing the field learns about international business — internationalization, the MNE, cross-cultural management, international strategy/finance/economics, or global political economy. A general management insight that happens to use foreign data is not enough.
4. Cross-national-variation gate. Either your variation is cross-country, or you have a defensible reason a single-country study speaks to IB theory (e.g., it tests a boundary condition of an IB theory). Single-country convenience samples framed as "international" are a desk-reject risk.

Phenomenon stress test