Tribute to Yair Aharoni

I am very sorry to learn of Yair’s death. He was one of my most valued long-distance friends over the years. In the 2000s, he and I interacted frequently at Academy of International Business (AIB) meetings, where he participated in panels and sessions to talk about a number of his interests, which we shared: management of state-owned enterprises, privatization of state-owned enterprises, internationalization of service-sector firms, theories of the multinational enterprise, and of course his path-breaking theme of looking in detail at the foreign (direct) investment decision process. I think that we must have enjoyed dozens of coffee-fueled discussions of things like why privatizations have produced some terrible outcomes in a number of countries (e.g., in Eastern Europe) and much more positive outcomes in others (e.g., in Chile), and how business service companies internationalize on bases that are not all that different from the strategies of “traditional” manufacturing companies. Yair’s wide-ranging interests and his careful thought process were extremely insightful and challenging to those who might not analyze things quite so deliberately and incisively. It is funny, but I cannot remember a time when I disagreed with his reasoning; we had different examples in mind for our thinking in many instances, but I could never find fault with his logic — even if it did not support my point of view!…