Contents:
Preface
Part I Introdution
1. The theoretical foundations
Part II Multinational corporations from the resource abundant countries
2. The emergence of multinational corporations from the United States: The period until 1914
3.The evolution of multinational corporations from the United States: The period since 1914
4. The emergence and evolution of multinational corporations from Sweden
5. The emergence and evolution of multinational corporations from Brazil
6. Conclusion: The emergence and evolution of multinational corporations from the resource abundant countries
Part III Multinational corporations from the resource scarce large countries
7. The emergence and evolution of multinational corporations from the United Kingdom
8. The emergence and evolution of multinational corporations from Germany
9. The emergence and evolution of multinational corporations from Japan
10. The emergence and evolution of multinational corporations from Taiwan
11. The emergence and evolution of multinational corporations from South Korea
12. Conclusion: The emergence and evolution of multinational corporations from the resource scarce large countries
Part IV Multinational corporations from the resource scarce small countries
13. The emergence and evolution of multinatioanl corporations from Switzerland
14. The emergence and evolution of multinational corporations from Hong Kong
15. The emergence and evolution of multinational corporations from Singapore
16. Conclusion: The emergence and evolution of multinational corporations from the resource scarce small countries
Part V Conclusion
17. The emergence and evolution of multinational corporations: implications for theory

By providing a detailed analysis of the extent to which the McDonald's Corporation adapts or imposes its labour relations policies in Europe, this volume represents a real life case study revealing the interaction between a global multi-national enterprise and the regulatory systems of a number of different European countries.

The first book-length treatment of theories, practical lessons, and the full set of critical issues that affect international joint ventures. It addresses culture, human resources, learning, legal, management, and research and development, and presents a full set of decisions and detailed guidelines for IJV formation and management. It also thoroughly analyzes 30 case studies.

Taiwanese foreign direct investment rapidly expanded in the mid-1980s when the domestic wage rate and the value of the Taiwanese currency skyrocketed simultaneously. Losing their competitive edge at home, many Taiwanese firms relocated to lower wage countries; mainly Southeast Asia and China. Taiwanese Firms in Southeast Asia provides a comprehensive review of Taiwan's direct investment in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam. It also explores the motivation behind investment in Asia, Europe and the US. In most countries, incidence of foreign direct investment is positively correlated with firm size. However, in Taiwanese firms, the opposite is true. The book examines the reasons for this and assesses the difference in practice between small and large firms conducting foreign direct investment, focusing on the manufacturing sector. The book also includes an original, comprehensive survey and a series of interviews with Taiwanese parent firms and their subsidiaries in Southeast Asia. The authors conclude that networking underscores the core competitiveness of Taiwanese firms and when these firms invest abroad, they attempt to maintain a close connection with domestic networks to retain competitiveness and flexibility. However, they will have difficulty in sustaining this in the long-term because co-ordination of production across national borders requires intensive input of managerial resources which are scarce among Taiwanese firms. In the long-term, they have to localize and integrate themselves into the local networks. The book is a result of joint research efforts by Taiwanese, American and Southeast Asian scholars and will be required reading for students and scholars of economies in Southeast Asia, international business, Asian studies and multinational enterprise.

Chinese companies have managed to perform well in Malaysia, especially after the recession in the mid-1980s, due to a clear change in the Malay dominated government's attitude to Chinese capital. Despite the problems that prevail among UMNO politicians, the government has provided a stable economic environment and offers opportunities for domestic private investment, even for the Chinese. Given these circumstances, it does appear that Chinese capital in Malaysia has reasonable prospects for further growth in the immediate future. This study examines the dominant role of Chinese capital in the economy, providing in-depth empirical research on its mode of development and styles of operation. Covering the period from colonial times to the present day this study identifies key issues pertaining to Chinese business operations in Malaysia: ownership and control patterns, style of growth, relations with the state, politicians and other Chinese businessmen, and the manner of development of business abroad, whilst debunking the theory that large-scale Chinese capital is not very entrepreneurial in nature.

This volume is a detailed account of the evolution and theory of multinational trading companies. In the history of multinational business, trading companies have played an especially significant and strategic role which continues until the present day, when Japan's "sogo shosha" and giant commodity traders feature among the world's largest businesses. However, the origins and strategies of multinational trading companies are little known compared to those of manufacturing multinationals. The book features contributions from an international selection of US, European and Asian economists and business historians which demonstrate the importance of trading companies in trade and investment flows in the world economy from the 19th century to the late 1990s. The authors adopt evolutionary and comparative perspectives to examine diversification strategies and organizational structures. This study contributes to our knowledge of the history and theory of international business.

Globalization, information and communication technologies, and the millennials who have entered the workforce, compelled corporations to change their resistant and defensive approaches to diversity and to proactively address differences. Companies determined that embracing diversity positively impacts their bottom line, as a result of the variety of perspectives and skills that derive from fostering a diverse workforce. To date, the majority of the studies in the business and communication fields shed light on diversity engagement in the US and leave room for the further exploration of how diversity is construed and approached in international milieus. There is a paucity of recent studies on diversity engagement in the US and the topic requires current investigation of the newest corporate engagement in diversity. Diversity in Multinational Corporations aims to address the two gaps in the literature. For this purpose, the book analyzes the diversity approaches of twenty-eight US companies from ten industries to develop a theoretical framework whose practical application enables companies to make significant contributions to the environments in which they operate. The framework addresses the present challenges that American corporations face in their diversity engagement, namely low employee engagement and "diversity fatigue," and proposes the implementation of a new social responsibility approach, whose aim is to address inequality at a global scale by adaption to the local environment and less focus on immediate business benefits. Finally, because the book discusses diversity engagement in global business environments, its results can be applied by international companies that operate at a global scale.

This edited book addresses two critical issues in international management: building trust and managing boundary spanning activities between international business partners. The duel-process of internationalization of multinational corporations (MNCs), through globalisation and regionalisation, has helped MNCs to increase their market expansion and improve the capabilities of innovation and learning. By creating various forms of international strategic alliances (ISAs), MNCs have become structurally more complex and geographically more dispersed. As a result, MNCs in general and ISAs in particular face the challenges of discerning blurred organisational boundaries, reconfiguring the control mechanisms, integrating diversified resources, and coordinating distributed activities in time and space. Research in organisation behaviour indicates that boundary spanners play critical yet unspecified roles and functions in managing cross-boundary relationships. A core boundary spanning function is to build trust relationships. When organisations engage in business transactions, members of the organisations are concerned with not only the outcomes of economic transactions but also the processes of social exchanges. Boundary spanners may succeed in building interpersonal trust in a partnership, nonetheless their effort may not lead to inter-partner trust without an effective implementation of the institutionalisation process. Whereas trustworthiness is the antecedent to trust providing the basis for trust to develop, distrust manifests itself as a separate and linked concept to trust. These dynamic features of trust, trustworthiness, and distrust are critically elaborated. Trust Building and Boundary Spanning in Cross-Border Management is dedicated to explicating these under-researched themes and contributing to the emerging streams of research in micro foundations and micro-structural approaches. It illustrates the latest research on the topic and will be of interest to both students at an advanced level, academics and reflective practitioners in the fields of organisational behaviour and theory, strategic management, international strategy and strategic alliances.

Multinational Enterprise and Transnational Regions offers an innovative approach to the study of the history of transnational economic regions. The Rhine valley is such a region comprising the cities and areas along the Rhine river and its tributaries. The transition from coal to oil that unfolded between 1945 and 1973 rapidly transformed the region, shattering some of the old river-based connections and creating new ones with the introduction of large-scale cross-border oil pipelines. Multinational enterprises shaped these new regional connections but divergent national government responses gave rise to differentiated development in different parts of the Rhine valley. Multinational Enterprise and Transnational Regions argues that processes of regional change should be understood from transnational interconnections rather than from local or national perspectives. This book uses a transnational business history methodology to tease out the region's transformation and to circumvent the national bias in public sources. It will be of relevance to academics and researchers with an interest in regional and transnational European history, international business, environmental history, and business history, as well as practitioners interested in the oil industry, energy and energy history, business history and international business, and associated disciplines.

For many years, vertical integration characterized the international oil industry, with the same company controlling the entire process from crude exploration and production to the retailing. This structure was radically transformed in the 1970s and this book, originally published in 1984, examines whether the dis-integration which resulted was a long-term trend or a temporary phase. It examines the attitude of the major international oil companies, discusses the policies adopted by oil producing and oil importing countries, and the limits of 'government to government' deals underlined. The political and strategic implications of re-integration are explored, and relations between oil exporters and importers, and between the USA, Europe and the Arab world discussed.

Recent analysis of international competitiveness has helped to increase levels of interest in technological innovation as a crucial factor determining the kind of advantages required in an economic scenario. At the same time, particular attention has been devoted to the role which multinational corporations are playing in the production of technological capabilities for the global markets. The aim of this study is to contribute to an understanding of those intermediate countries with specific reference to two relevant international areas. On the one hand, those countries of southern Europe whose dynamic is very much influenced by the phases of European construction. In this context, multinational corporations are reorganizing their strategies among which technology creation is central. On the other hand, in most industrialized countries of Latin America the opening up process has changed the traditional role played by multinational corporations.

Multinational Investment and Economic Structure examines the relationship between industrial development and foreign direct investment (FDI) activities, and the interaction between multinational (MNE) activity and economic structures. It deals with the changing structure of the world economy as a whole, and the dynamics of the relationship between industrial development and the extent of FDI activities across countries. It evaluates the concurrent (and interrelated) evolutionary processes behind economic growth and MNE activity and how these evolutionary forces impact on the economic structure of individual economies in the industrialised world as their economies converge through globalisation.

This work examines the evolution of Japanese direct investment in Europe and explores its determinants. It then illustrates how, as multinationals, Japanese firms adapt to local conditions and try to take advantage of a global organization. In this respect, three areas are more particularly explored: human resource management, relationships with suppliers, and research and development unit locations. The impact of Japanese locations on their host countries is also studied. While Japanese industrial units may represent a challenge to European competitors they may also accelerate useful technological awareness. The macroeconomic impact, on employment in particular, is negligible but regional or sectoral impacts can be sizeable.

Because of the potential ease with which transnational corporations can relocate, many governments have avoided direct attempts to intervene in their activities. Nonetheless, the major economies have adopted a wide range of policies towards transnational corporations. Some (Japan and France in particular) have been very concerned by the impact of such firms. Others (most notably Britain) have had a relatively relaxed attitude. This book offers an account of policy towards transnationals over the last 30 years or so. It features: detailed, up-to-date accounts of policy in Japan, France, Germany, the United States and Britain; the role of organizations other than governments, including trade unions, business and opposition parties; summaries of which issues have most concerned which countries overall characterizations of each country's policy stance. The result should appeal to those interested in industrial economics, international business, global political economy, and international law.

Transnational corporations are now of immense significance for most economies. However, by definition they are involved in international production and this poses problems for national governments. The threat of a major company leaving gives it leverage over its host government. This means that even though there is a broad consensus that in some respects the impact of a transnational on an economy can be negative, there is a marked reluctance on the part of governments to try to do anything about it. Although they remain sensitive to the problems posed by transnationals, the authors of "Making Transnationals Accountable" do not accept that there is nothing that can be done to influence the behaviour of transnationals. The authors advocate a policy of monitoring their activities and use a comparative approach to show that many governments know surprisingly little about the impact of transnationals on their economies. They identify areas which governments might like to know more about. In an attempt to show what their approach might mean in practice, they draw upon the new techniques developed in social accounting to prepare a detailed social and economic account of "Glaxo".

Transnational corporations are now of immense significance for most economies. However, by definition they are involved in international production and this poses problems for national governments. The threat of a major company leaving gives it leverage over its host government. This means that even though there is a broad consensus that in some respects the impact of a transnational on an economy can be negative, there is a marked reluctance on the part of governments to try to do anything about it. Although they remain sensitive to the problems posed by transnationals, the authors of "Making Transnationals Accountable" do not accept that there is nothing that can be done to influence the behaviour of transnationals. The authors advocate a policy of monitoring their activities and use a comparative approach to show that many governments know surprisingly little about the impact of transnationals on their economies. They identify areas which governments might like to know more about. In an attempt to show what their approach might mean in practice, they draw upon the new techniques developed in social accounting to prepare a detailed social and economic account of "Glaxo".

Since the bursting of Japan's bubble economy, from 1990 onwards, its multinational companies (MNCs) have faced new competitive challenges, and questions about the management practices on which they had built their initial success in global markets. Japanese engagement in the international economy has undergone a number of phases. Historically, Japanese MNCs learnt from foreign companies, frequently through strategic alliances. After the post-war 'economic miracle', Japanese manufacturers in particular converted themselves into MNCs, transferred their home-grown capabilities to overseas subsidiaries, and made an impact on the world economy. But the period after 1990 marked declining Japanese competitiveness, and asked questions about the ability of Japanese MNCs to be more responsive and global in their strategies, organization, and capabilities. It has been argued that the established management practices of Japanese MNCs inhibited adaptation to recent demands of global competition. This volume presents new case evidence on how Japanese MNCs have responded to the new challenges of the global market place, and it provides examples of how they have transformed strategies and competitive capabilities. This book was originally published as a special issue of Asia Pacific Business Review.

This study explores the struggle for gains from direct investment between multinationals and developing countries. Its purpose is to explain differences in taxation and nationalization between countries, and to consider how direct investments can best contribute to social welfare worldwide. Using game theory models, and taking into account that the developing countries also compete with each other to attract investors, it is shown that policies which manipulate behaviour do not normally distort direct investments, whilst policies that interfere with ownership do. It also demonstrates that governments that maximize social welfare should not be expected to sacrifice the environment to attract multinationals.

This book, first published in 1988, examines the impact of multinational companies on the British economy and the British government's policy responses. It assesses the effects of multinationals both on the national economy and on different regions and evaluates the benefits and problems brought by overseas companies. It looks at how government has attempted to entice multinationals to invest, and the UK government's success in these attraction efforts as compared with other countries. Regulatory aspects of policy are also reviewed and evaluated, and consideration is given to possible new policy approaches. This title will be of interest to students of business studies.

This book, first published in 1987, outlines the motives and methods of overseas operations by international contractors. Drawing on an economic analysis of the industry and on elements of international investment and production theory the book discusses the problems of both individual enterprises and the major nationality groups in the industry

Multinational corporate managers, financial analysts, and accountants disagree on what constitutes the appropriate process of translating and consolidating foreign financial statements into US financial statements. In this book, first published in 1993, the author examines financial accounting regarding foreign currency translation for and by multinational corporations by developing: (a) an historical background for the topic, (b) a comparative analysis of two foreign currency translation accounting standards, (c) a topical review of relevant prior research, and (d) a study of multinational corporate managers' actions when they face a choice between two accounting standards. This title will be of interest to students of business studies.

The volumes in this set, originally published between 1955 and 1993, draw together research by leading academics in the area of multinationals and provides a rigorous examination of related key issues. The volumes examine foreign investment and currency translation, environmental control issues and the impact of multinationals on the British economy. This set will be of particular interest to students of business studies.

One surprising development in the growth of multinational businesses and international trade is the large and growing amount of intra-industry direct foreign investment. Intra-industry direct foreign investment is the phenomenon whereby multinationals from two countries have overseas manufacturing operations in each other's countries. The phenom

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) experienced 'golden days' during the 1990s and 2000s, they expanded globally and were major players in globalization. Today they have become powerful actors in the global economy. CEOs of international businesses are welcomed by heads of state as their counterparts, they are invited by governments to help solve global issues such as climate change and poverty, and they are facing dilemmas comparable to those of other international actors. However, MNEs are facing global legitimacy challenges. They are suspected of tax avoidance, using low wage countries for corporate benefits only, disrespecting privacy regulations, abusing consumer data, violating local community rights, exploiting natural resources, ignoring basic human rights, and employing too many lobbyists targeting national and international political decision-making processes for their own corporate interests. Although many of these challenges are not new, they have resurfaced and become more apparent during the past couple of years, partly due to the economic recession that many developed economies have faced and to the broader awareness of increasing global inequality and the importance of sustainability. How can international business respond? Strategic business diplomacy may be the answer. Business diplomacy involves developing strategies for long-term, positive relationship building with governments, local communities, and interest groups, aiming to establish and sustain legitimacy and to mitigate the risks arising from all non-commercial or exogenous factors in the global business environment. Business diplomacy is different from lobbying or strategic political activity; it implies an (strategic / holistic) approach of an international business to look at itself as an actor in the international diplomatic arena. Representation, communication and negotiation are key in such an approach. One of the consequences is that MNEs are able to operate in and show respect for an international business environment that consists of multiple stakeholders. This demands a strategic perspective and vision on the sector and the business environments in which the company wants to operate, and requires a specific set of instruments, skills and competences.

Globalization, information and communication technologies, and the millennials who have entered the workforce, compelled corporations to change their resistant and defensive approaches to diversity and to proactively address differences. Companies determined that embracing diversity positively impacts their bottom line, as a result of the variety of perspectives and skills that derive from fostering a diverse workforce. To date, the majority of the studies in the business and communication fields shed light on diversity engagement in the US and leave room for the further exploration of how diversity is construed and approached in international milieus. There is a paucity of recent studies on diversity engagement in the US and the topic requires current investigation of the newest corporate engagement in diversity. Diversity in Multinational Corporations aims to address the two gaps in the literature. For this purpose, the book analyzes the diversity approaches of twenty-eight US companies from ten industries to develop a theoretical framework whose practical application enables companies to make significant contributions to the environments in which they operate. The framework addresses the present challenges that American corporations face in their diversity engagement, namely low employee engagement and "diversity fatigue," and proposes the implementation of a new social responsibility approach, whose aim is to address inequality at a global scale by adaption to the local environment and less focus on immediate business benefits. Finally, because the book discusses diversity engagement in global business environments, its results can be applied by international companies that operate at a global scale.