MESD’17 focuses on the following broad topical areas:

• The manner in which MNEs contribute, in countries where they operate, to alleviating poverty and hunger, ensuring equitable education for all, achieving gender equity, ensuring sustainable management of water, offering decent conditions of work for all workers, fostering sustainable innovation, ensuring sustainable production and consumption, combating global warming, or conserving and sustainably using water resources.
• Ways MNEs can positively or negatively influence agenda-setting and political decision-making of governments of countries in which they operate.
• Multinationals’ corporate governance frameworks, decisional structures, organizational behavior, accounting and accountability practices, and/or implementation strategies in various functional areas (human resources, marketing, technology, communications, etc.) for sustainable development.
• The role of macroeconomic (political, social, legal, institutional, cultural, etc.), microeconomic (market, competition, stakeholders, industry sectors, etc.), and organizational (size, hierarchy, executive management, etc.) factors on the emergence and continuity of MNEs’ sustainable practices.
• The impact of MNEs’ sustainable strategies on relevant regional and/or international regimes (trade agreements, treaties, codes, norms, standards, monitoring systems, etc.)
• MNEs’ engagement with outside institutions (other MNEs, NGOs, local governments, etc.) to effectively implement sustainable development goals.
• Role of emerging economies on MNEs’ sustainable development strategies.

The MESD’17 also enthusiastically invites submissions bearing on the following contemporary questions:

• How are MNEs with significant North American operations responding to the evolution of U.S. policy frameworks on sustainability and environmental regulation (New US Administration policy adjustments to climate action, carbon cost issues and impacts on multinational operations based in the U.S.)?
• How are MNEs’ sustainable strategies changing in response to the retreat of the universal ethic of corporate globalization?
• What will follow the emergence of China as leader of globalization and trendsetter for sustainable development policies?
• How do international institutions (UN, NATO, EU, WTO, etc.) shape MNEs’ sustainable development evolving in the context of rising populism in Europe and America (accounting, reporting, compliance, strategy, public/private partnership trends, investment ethics, etc.)?
• What actions have MNEs taken in response to COP21 and the Paris Agreement (operational changes, accounting and disclosure of carbon emissions, etc.)?
• How have MNEs’ corporate communications on sustainability governance evolved with the increasing transparency demanded by digital and social media? How do these communication strategies differ across industries? What are the social impacts ensuing from an enhanced role for MNEs in the implementation of sustainable development goals?

MESD’17 encourages any type of multi-, inter- or transdisciplinary studies and practices linking disciplines, knowledge systems and stakeholders to help MNEs to reach these sustainable development goals. A variety of conceptual and empirical submissions, drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives and diverse methodologies (case studies, in-depth issue studies, speculative analyses) are welcome. MESD’17 also encourages solutions-oriented studies by going beyond the analysis of problems to offer potential for significant sustainability benefit.