Societal actors increasingly expect multinational enterprises (MNEs) to positively impact the host countries in which they operate. While these expectations have prompted IB scholars to engage more extensively with the societal impacts of foreign direct investment (FDI), our collective knowledge of these impacts is limited. Early IB literature investigated FDI’s aggregate impact but generally confined the scope to economic effects. Contemporary, strategy-oriented IB scholarship broadened the scope of impact types to include social and ecological effects, yet mostly limited the scope of the impacted actors to MNEs themselves. We argue that IB research should more comprehensively assess FDI’s impact by incorporating social and ecological effects in addition to economic ones, and by accounting for a broader set of stakeholders beyond MNEs. IB scholars should challenge the assumption that FDI’s economic impacts spill over to positive societal outcomes, and that MNEs’ interests parallel those of host countries. A more comprehensive assessment will require IB scholars to question “win–win” assumptions about the complementarity of corporate societal and financial performance, examine FDI’s societal impact over longer time horizons, leverage innovative approaches from allied sciences, and consider interactions between different types of societal effects in order to appreciate their sometimes countervailing effects.

社会参与者越来越期望跨国企业 (MNE) 能够对其运营所在国产生积极影响。虽然这些期望促使国际文凭学者更广泛地研究外国直接投资 (FDI) 的社会影响，但我们对这些影响的集体了解有限。早期的国际投资文献研究了外国直接投资的总体影响，但通常将范围局限于经济影响。当代以战略为导向的国际文凭学术研究扩大了影响类型的范围，将社会和生态影响包括在内，但大多将受影响的参与者范围限制在跨国公司本身。我们认为，国际投资研究应该更全面地评估外国直接投资的影响，除了经济影响之外，还应纳入社会和生态影响，并考虑跨国公司以外更广泛的利益相关者。国际文凭学者应该挑战这样的假设：外国直接投资的经济影响会溢出到积极的社会成果，以及跨国公司的利益与东道国的利益平行。更全面的评估将要求国际文凭学者质疑关于企业社会和财务绩效互补性的“双赢”假设，研究外国直接投资在较长时期内的社会影响，利用相关科学的创新方法，并考虑不同类型社会之间的相互作用。的影响，以了解它们有时的抵消作用。