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The fourth MESD International Conference (MESD’15) is jointly organized by the AUDAX - Entrepreneurship Center of ISCTE-IUL which hosts the conference this year, the ICN Business School (France), the CEREFIGE of the Université de Lorraine (France), and the Center for International Business Education and Research, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA.

Who Should Participate?
This international conference will be of great interest to researchers, scientists, experts, consultants and other professionals working in the broad areas of any enterprise having a role to play for a more sustain business. We are looking forward to the participation of persons in a position to influence the strategic and future vision of their companies in the full range of sustainability issues. This conference also seeks to meet needs of governments and regulatory bodies, industry associations, the UN family of institutions and non-governmental organizations. We welcome paper proposals from research faculties, business decision makers and policy practitioners, as well as advanced graduate students.

Main Topic: MNEs, Sustainability and Climate Change
To achieve the transformation towards a more sustainable world, the main political, economic and societal actors are looking for global solutions to face the global climate change which is perceived as the most important issue of our time. An ever increasing number of regions, sectors, ecosystems and social groups are confronted in the same time by the impacts of climate change on future societal transformation. Climate change is also severely affecting MNEs activities in a wide variety of sectors and countries. Their large activities can accelerate or slow the sustainable development process both locally and globally.

Starting from this observation, MESD’15 will mainly focus on the ways MNEs can address climate change issues. Considering the magnitude of the global warming issues, MESD’15 expands its target to any enterprise concerned by climate change issues. A particular intention will be given to enterprises known as “Born Global” whose impact on sustainability issues is revolutionizing the traditional character of international business.

The conference seeks to identify any new feature of MNEs that is compatible with sustainable development in general and with the climate change issues in particular.

MESD’15 encourages any type of multi-, inter- or transdisciplinary studies and practices linking disciplines, knowledge systems and stakeholders to support a more sustainable business. Also, solutions-oriented studies in agreement with the Future Earth 2025 Vision are very welcome.

This can be done by exploring how enterprises can engage with the two major historic events that will take place in 2015: Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC which is expected to take place in December 2015, in Paris, France and United Nations Summit to adopt the post-2015 development agenda to take place in September 2015, in New York.
MESD’15 aims at providing an exchange forum for academics, consultants and business leaders with an interest in the advancement of innovation and sustainability in mature as well as emerging companies with an aspiration to play a significant role for a more sustainable world.

MESD’15 Tracks
The following tracks are only indicative of topics broadly fitting into the core of the conference. The conference will also welcome papers that establish or suggest new partnerships among institutions, climate change and MNEs. Authors are invited to select one the following 10 tracks:

1. Technology and sustainability
2. Born Globals
3. Resource allocation and efficiency
4. Corporate entrepreneurship
5. Entry modes and country selection
6. Global Value Change
7. Open Innovation
8. Corporate venturing
9. Corporate Social Responsibility
10. Risk and return of corporate innovation

Submission types

Extended abstracts: An extended abstract is a scholarly presentation of summary work consisting of a short description. The extended abstracts should be no more than 1500 words long (line space 1.5, Times New Roman, 12). It is intended to establish if research question(s) is pertinent to the MESD’15 conference. The extended abstract must include: title, key question, main hypotheses, problem, state-of-the art, methods used (if applicable), main findings, and some core references.

Full papers: The full papers should contain less than 5000 - 8000 words (line space 1.5, Times New Roman, 12), including images, tables, figures and appendixes.

Posters: Authors wishing to present a Poster should respect the following dimensions: 120cm x 85cm (approximately A0).

Case studies: This conference aims to link theory to practice, providing a forum for the presentation and discussion of business cases by some of the leading corporations. These case studies, integrated into a series of workshops, will be discussed by world experts who will help in defining the future agenda for these topics. They will be moderated by an expert in the area, also involving other institutional and European actors and international organizations. The submission of Case Studies in the areas of (i) idea generation, (ii) idea implementation and (iii) assessment and control, should have the following characteristics: a) Business Model, b) Vision and target, c) Competition, d) Business Strategies, e) Results and f) Future prospects. The Case Studies must be written in English, and should be no more than 20 pages long (line space 1,5, Times New Roman, 12). The document must include the name of all the authors, the institution represented and contact information.

Best Practices Papers: Best Practices may be defined as an efficient way, method or technique used to accomplish tasks and/or resolve problems, approved and recognized by organizations. The implementation of such practices comes from the need to overcome new problems or the necessity to improve the way organizations operate. The notion of « Best Practices » often implies a long and complex process beginning with the identification of the problem and resulting in its solution. Contributing to « Best Practices » infers providing a precise description of this process and accepting to exchange and share experiences with other organizations. This allows us to broaden the use of the proposed practices, which will eventually become approved and documented for accepted procedures and methods. In order to guarantee a high quality of « Best Practices » papers, it is important that their content be consistent. For this, we recommend that authors organize and structure their papers in the following manner:
The problem and its context (20%):Presentation of the organization and its internal and external environments; the problem, its origin, and its impact on the organization's activity; the primary reasons for investigating solutions.
The process used to solve the problem (40%):The intended goals of the project; the collection and processing of data, statistics, facts; the major steps of the process; the strategy and method employed; performance evaluation criteria.
Results and perspectives (40%):Fulfillment of economic, environmental, or societal goals; the key success factors; the obstacles and challenges encountered; conclusive information for the organization; perspectives for the future. 
To format their papers for submission, authors should use the same guidelines as described for research papers. To evaluate “Best Practices" papers, we will use the same review process and criteria as explained for scientific papers.

General Policies
The language of the conference and all submissions is English. Submissions to MESD’15 must be original and must not already have been published or accepted in a journal or conference proceedings nor presented at another conference. Further, they must not be currently under consideration for publication or presentation elsewhere. To encourage broad participation, the program committee discourages multiple appearances by the same individual on the program. Participants are requested to make no more than two submissions. At least one author of every accepted submission must register for the conference.

Important Dates

Extended Abstracts, Papers and Review Process

Extended abstracts need to be uploaded as prescribed in the website without author information as the reviewers will be directly downloading these submissions for evaluation in the double-blind review process. Extended abstracts are submitted to the peer-review process and its approval means the paper has been accepted for presentation at the conference. You have to follow the regular submission process. Extended abstracts should be sent before the deadline. In addition to extended abstracts, authors and scholars who are already working under these broad areas are encouraged to submit their working/full papers.

Before undergoing peer review, papers will be checked for compliance with submission guidelines and for overall appropriateness for the conference. Papers that pass the initial screening process will then be double-blind reviewed. The Program Co-Chairs reserve the right to shift a submission from one track to another as they deem appropriate. Reviewers provide constructive feedback and make suggestions to authors in order to improve the quality of the paper. The authors’ identities are not known to the reviewers. The research papers will be evaluated according to the following criteria: relevance to selected conference topics; clear definition of the core issue; mastery of the concepts used; theoretical and methodological contribution; advancement of the research agenda; usefulness to management practices; depth of the analyses and arguments; validity and consistency of the discussions; quality of the literature review; readability of the text; conformity with submission guidelines.

Final Paper Formatting
In order to give the proceedings a consistent, high-quality appearance, we request the authors follow some basic guidelines. You may download the MESD’15 template from the conference website and format your final paper exactly like this document. The easiest way to use this template is to download it from the conference webpage and replace the content with your own material. The template file contains specially formatted styles (e.g., Normal, Heading, Bullet, Table Text, References, Title, Author and Affiliation) that are designed to reduce the work in formatting your final submission. Final papers uploaded for inclusion in the Proceedings MUST include author information on a title cover page, must not be “locked” and should have no headers, footers or page numbers. These papers may also be downloaded by discussants and sessions chairs, but are not available to the general public.

How to Submit
A paperless submission and blind peer review process will be used for the 2015 International MESD Conference. Please submit your extended abstracts or papers using the on-line system: http://mesd.org/2015/howToSubmit.htm. Other means of submission place unnecessary burden on the program chairs, track chairs and reviewers. The submission process is very simple. The submission’s link will be available shortly on conference website. If you encounter any difficulty with the submission process, feel free to contact submission15@mesd.org

Fees
Conference registration fees can be paid through conference website. Registration fees include Conference Kit, all conference Tea/Coffee, Lunch and one Dinner but not accommodation. If you are a student, proof of student status, such as scan of your student identification is required and can be e-mailed to: register15@mesd.org. On-site payment will be accepted in cash only.

*Note: Students must submit a statement of school attendance. The Gala Dinner is not included.

WORKSHOPS (for professionals)

Note: The registration of two or more employees of a company obtains 20% discount on total.

Guests

*Note: Only social events are open to guests.

Publications
After the selection process is completed, we will publish extended abstract and presentations in an electronic proceedings BOOK. The most qualified papers will be published in special issues of international journals and books to enrich a growing body of policy and management literature. The Journal of Cleaner Production (5-Year Impact Factor: 4.088) has already accepted to publish a Special Volume of selected papers on "MNEs’ strategic dynamics and climate change: drivers, barriers and impacts of necessary organizational change". To know more about this special issue and other possible publications, visit MESD’15 website: http://mesd.org/2015/proceedings.htm and http://mesd.org/2015/publications.htm
The publication in association with other international journals is being negotiated at the time of this writing.

For further information, please contact:
E-mail: contact15@mesd.org

We look forward to have you on board

Conference Co-chairs
Pedro Sebastião, Silvester Ivanaj, John McIntyre and Vera Ivanaj