Introduction and Overview

  • Julian Birkinshaw
  • Neil Hood
Chapter

Abstract

Large multinational corporations (MNCs) have aroused the curiosity of researchers for many decades. While the MNC phenomenon can be defined remarkably simply — a firm that controls production assets in more than three countries, for example — its implications are far-reaching. A subfield of economics has grown up around the observation that the raison d’être of MNCs is their ability to internalise international transactions (Hymer, 1960/1976). In political economics, MNCs constitute a fundamental challenge to principles of national sovereignty (Servan-Schreiber, 1967). And in the field of management, MNCs represent the special case of organisations that span heterogeneous organisational environments (Westney, 1994).

Keywords

Foreign Direct Investment Host Country Multinational Corporation Foreign Subsidiary Subsidiary Strategy 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 1998

Authors and Affiliations

  • Julian Birkinshaw
  • Neil Hood

There are no affiliations available

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