We are thrilled to invite you to the 16^th Vaasa IB conference (17-18 August, 2021).

All interested IB scholars are invited to participate and present their research studies. The conference consists of about 10 panels and special sessions and more than 20 regular sessions related to various fields of international business such as strategy, marketing, and human resource management. We especially welcome papers related to:

• Sustainable strategies in International Business;
• Use and impact of digitalization in IB;
• Impact of Covid-19 on IB strategies and performance; and
• Restructuring strategies in IB: export exits, foreign subsidiary divestments, relocating, and market re-entry strategies.

The conference board consists of several well-known IB scholars like Jean-Francois Hennart, Pervez Ghauri, Antonella Zucchella, Stefan Schmid, Svetla Marinova, Ilan Alon, Leonidas Leonidou and Arnold Schuh. The main chair is Jorma Larimo from the University of Vaasa.

On Tuesday, June 8, a decision has been made by the COVID-19 group of the University of Vaasa consisting of Rector and Vice-Rectors to extend the ban on organising any event of more than 10 people at the premises of the University of Vaasa at least until the end of August 2021 and preliminary also lasting until the end of the year 2021.

Therefore 16th Vaasa Conference on International Business has to be organised ONLY ONLINE.

We hope that this does not influence your interest in participating in our conference. There are interesting special panels and session to be organised during the conference and we cannot wait to meet with you online.

We are sorry about the situation but the decision-makers have highlighted the safety issues as the highest priority.

Vaasa IB conference is the largest biannually organized conference in the International Business field in the Nordic countries since the late 1990s with more than 100 participants.