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Towards a Political Economy Framework: TNCs as National and Global Players

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Multinationals, Institutions and the Construction of Transnational Practices

Abstract

Transnational corporations (TNCs), like all large and complex formal organizations, have two core features. First, they produce goods and services that satisfy consumer needs, and in the course of doing so provide income and employment to large numbers of people. Second, they are political actors, using power to shape the conditions under which they conduct their productive activities and as a result profoundly influence the lives of employees, customers and local communities. Something of these two aspects was captured by The Economist (27 March 1993) when it called them ‘everybody’s favourite monster’. The purpose of this chapter is to contribute theoretically to the second ‘political’ view but without losing sight of the first.

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Authors
  1. Jacques Bélanger
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  2. Paul Edwards
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Leicester Business School, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

    Anthony Ferner (Professor of International Human Resource Management) (Professor of International Human Resource Management)

  2. IESE Business School, University of Navarra, Spain

    Javier Quintanilla (Associate Professor) (Associate Professor)

  3. IESE Business School, University of Navarra, Spain

    Carlos Sánchez-Runde (Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Faculty) (Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Faculty)

Copyright information

© 2006 Jacques Bélanger and Paul Edwards

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Bélanger, J., Edwards, P. (2006). Towards a Political Economy Framework: TNCs as National and Global Players. In: Ferner, A., Quintanilla, J., Sánchez-Runde, C. (eds) Multinationals, Institutions and the Construction of Transnational Practices. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230502307_2

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