Introduction to the special issue—Journeys along the Silk Road: Intercultural approaches to comparative business systems and practices

Abstract

For 2,000 years, the Silk Road has linked the cultures of the Arab World and northern Asia. Medieval travelers like Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo traded in ideas as well as tangible commodities. Mutual influences between these two worlds have been interpenetrating in their long-lasting impact on business practices and management philosophies. The Silk Road is a network of routes over 6,000 kilometers long, composed of tarmac highways, desert tracks, caravan routes, and long-forgotten paths, linking the major epicenters of civilization. Since records began, it has been the region through which East has met West, providing a conduit for the material goods, invading armies, fleeing refugees, technological innovation, mathematics, empirical science, and language that have shaped the trajectory and framed the styles of European and Asian history and culture. Today, in its geopolitical implications, the region comprising the Silk Road is as influential for the twenty-first century as at any time in the past millennium.