According to Holsapple et al. (1993:232), it is considered important to take stock periodically of the present channels – books, journal articles and conference proceedings – available for communicating scholarly discourse and research. When looking at international management (IM) research, this has been done internationally with Lu (2003) focusing on contributions and gaps in international strategic management research, Peng and Zhou (2006) looking at the impact and influence of global strategy research and Werner (2002) focusing on recent trends in IM research. Although these articles have given us a clearer understanding of the state of IM research internationally, very little is known about the state of IM research in South Africa.

In identifying the IM research published in South African management journals over the last decade (2004–2013), this study focused on the seven South African management journals accredited by the South African Department of Higher Education and Training (Department of Higher Education and Training 2012), namely, Acta Commercii, Journal of Contemporary Management, Management Dynamics, South African Journal of Business Management, South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences, SA Journal of Human Resource Management and Southern African Business Review. These journals were chosen because they were considered to have a South African focus; even though South African authors do publish in international journals, examples being Barnard (2008), Klein and Wöcke (2007), Luiz and Charalambous (2009) and Wöcke and Klein (2009), publishing in international journals is considered to be more difficult (Tsui 2004:491).

Reasons for this could be the perception of entry barriers created by disciplinary and paradigmatic preferences of gate-keepers of the leading international scholarly journals, as well as the continued dominance of IM scholarship by authors from North America (Kirkman & Law, in Kriek et al. 2009:127). As a result, South African research is thought to be published predominantly in local journals. Although the place of publication of a journal is not a perfect indicator of the origin of the article, it can be seen as being a reasonable indicator of the type of research and source of data that are likely to be included (Tsui 2004:492).

The analysis of the content of the 1313 articles published in these seven journals over the last 10 years started with an analysis of the titles of the articles in order to exclude the purely domestic, non-IM, articles from the list. An example of such a title would be: The impact of hunting for biltong purposes on the SA economy (Saayman, Van der Merwe & Rossouw 2011). If any doubt existed, the article would go through to the second round of analysis, during which the abstract of each article was analysed in an attempt to determine if it had an IM focus and, if so, under which IM topic it should be classified. The last round of the analysis involved all articles over which there was still doubt and involved a thorough analysis of the entire article.

Werner's (2002:280) 12 distinct IM topics were used as classification for this study (see Table 1); although Werner (2002:281) stated that his 12 IM topics should be treated as an organising tool rather than a definitive classification, redefining the topics of IM fell outside the scope of this study.

The research focused on IM rather than international business (IB) – it would therefore be appropriate at this time to note the differences in focus between these two areas, if any. Cavusgil, Knight and Riesenberger (2008:4) define IB as referring to the performance of trade and investment activities by enterprises across national boundaries or as cross-border business, whilst Hodgetts and Luthans (2003:5) define IM as being the process of applying management concepts and techniques in a multinational environment. Contractor (2000:7–8) provides a clearer distinction by stating that the range of interests of the two fields shows a considerable overlap but with a difference in emphasis. IM literature, for the most part, does not focus on the interaction of the enterprise with supranational institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund, whilst the IB literature also includes the international aspects of other functional areas such as finance, accounting and marketing, all of which are absent in the IM literature. ‘In short, international management is concerned with the management of an international business or multinational corporation’ (Kriek et al. 2009:126).

According to Werner (2002:277), IM research can be grouped into three categories:

Studies that look at the management of enterprises in a multinational context; this research emphasises the international aspects of management that do not exist in domestic enterprises.

As in the study by Werner (2002:278), this study focused on the first of these categories – pure IM research – and excluded comparative management studies and foreign domestic studies. For the purpose of clarity, each of the 12 IM research topics identified by Werner (2002:277) and used to classify the South African research is described briefly in Table 1.

As can be seen from the information provided in Table 2, a total of 1313 articles were published in the seven journals between 2004 and 2013. When these articles are compared to the list of IM topics, only 35 can be classified as IM articles, or 2.7% of the total.

When looking at Table 3, it can be seen that of the 35 IM articles, the largest number, namely eight, were focused on the global business environment, whilst the topic international exchange had seven articles and multinational enterprises, five articles. One topic, namely foreign direct investment, was not covered by any article.

Looking at the dates of these publications (see Table 4), it can be seen that there was a decrease in the number of publications since 2009 with only 10 publications between 2009 and 2013, whereas the five years up to 2009 (2004–2008) produced 25 articles.

Lastly, it can be seen from Table 2 that the journal that published the most IM articles was the South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences. However, when looking at the number of published IM articles as a percentage of the total number of articles published, Acta Commercii leads the field with 6.4%, followed by the Journal of Contemporary Management with 4.2%.

As indicated by Werner (2002:277), as business becomes more global and IM issues play a more central role in business practice, the importance and relevance of IM research increases. This is, however, not the case in South Africa. Not only do the total number of IM articles published in South African management journals – 35 out of 1313 articles – represent a mere 2.7% of all articles published, but there was a decline in the number of IM articles, from 25 between 2004 and 2008 to 10 between 2009 and 2013. This is at a time when South African enterprises are increasingly becoming more international and playing an increasingly important role, both internationally and in Africa, in particular (South Africa Foundation 2004:6–13; UNCTAD 2004:21–22; 2005:3).

With either no article or, at best, two articles covering the following IM topics, the following seven topics in particular deserve much more research attention:

Internationalisation.

Particular topics that could receive a great deal more attention, given South African enterprises’ presence in Africa, are (Akbar & Samii 2005:391–392):

Developing conceptual frameworks for market-entry strategies.

This shortage of South African research supports the finding of Newa and Fillippaios (quoted in Oosthuizen 2005:77), who state that there is a lack of IM research on lesser-developed economies such as South Africa. This means that South African enterprises have to base their internationalisation and international management decisions on research originating predominantly in the USA and Western Europe; and that our tertiary institutions have to rely on research findings from the USA and Western Europe in their IM courses. This generalisation of management theories across countries is, however, not always possible, as found by Vögel and Pires da Cunha (2010:75), a finding supported by both House et al. and Javidan et al. (in Kriek et al. 2009:126–127).

The findings also show that over the last 10 years Acta Commercii has been more open to the publication of South African IM articles, with the highest percentage of its articles focusing on this field.

Lau (2002:174), focusing on the state of Asian management research, stated that management research in Asia has something to offer to the broader body of knowledge, but that the work done has been inadequate, a sentiment worth repeating with regard to IM research in South Africa.

Although a great deal of IM research has been done over the years, most of it seems to focus on and originate in the USA and Europe and cannot be generalised to multinational enterprises in all countries. As an emerging market, South Africa could be an important testing ground for existing theories, models and concepts of business and management, as well as for the development of new theories in the field of IM. However, even though South African enterprises are increasingly internationalising their operations, a mere 35 (2.7%) of the 1313 articles published in South African management journals over the last 10 years (2004–2013) focused on IM research. There seems to be a shortage in research on all 12 IM topics and the following seven topics in particular have received little or no attention: internationalisation; entry-mode decisions; international joint ventures; FDI; transfer of knowledge; strategic alliances and networks; and subsidiary–HQ relations.

By highlighting the lack of IM research in South Africa, this study identified the gaps in this research, which should help future researchers; it also serves as a source of IM information for other researchers looking for sources of South African IM research.