Corporate Mobility

Abstract

The facility with which multinational enterprises can move products, offices or factories, and capital across national borders generates a distinct set of problems. A significant part of the attraction of multinational activity is found in the flexibility and opportunity which this ability allows. Corporations active in the international arena are likely to be drawn to the advantages of this mobility, and perhaps also to be attracted to the potential for abuse which it offers. A significant feature of this set of issues is that it encompasses several of the areas in which multinational corporations are seen as distinct threats to advanced industrialized societies, though they trouble developing nations as well. These issues fall into three general sorts: problems caused by the facility with which corporations can transport products from market to market, those resulting from their ability nimbly to evade effective legal control or taxation, and those resulting from their facility in moving jobs, plant and capital from nation to nation. Each of these categories will be examined in its turn.