Embedding the Multinational: Bridging Internal and External Networks in Transitional Institutional Contexts
- PDF / 285,355 Bytes
- 21 Pages / 442 x 663 pts Page_size
- 35 Downloads / 128 Views
Embedding the Multinational: Bridging Internal and External Networks in Transitional Institutional Contexts Ray Loveridge Said Business School, The University of Oxford, Park End Street, Oxford, Oxon OX1 1HP, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
The social embeddedness of the guest multinational enterprise (MNE) is presented as a multi-layered series of interfaces between expatriate managers and agencies and actors within the host state. In contrast to the unilinear and intentional development of strategic relations between the parties described in much of the literature on international business, the author seeks to demonstrate that relations are segmented by a diversity of micro- and macro-social and political considerations. Not least among these are differences of life chances among ethnic groups in the host country and by careers within the guest MNE. The study that provides the basis for these observations is presented as a ‘high-context’ deep description of roles and actors within the head offices of 20 European MNEs and within their affiliates located in Brunei Darassalam, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Asian Business & Management (2005) 4, 389–409. doi:10.1057/palgrave.abm.9200143 Keywords: multinationals; governance; expatriates; translation; innovation; corruption
Introduction The multinational enterprise (MNE) can be portrayed as both major protagonist and architect of integrated global markets. It thus becomes the site of a new concentration of authority within a ‘trans-national social space’ (Morgan et al., 2001). One source of its new-found authority is to be found in the vast increase in direct investment (FDI), that is, in assets located and operated within countries other than the one in which the MNE originates (UNCTAD, 2000). The reasons for the explosion of FDI in the final 20 years of the last century are complex (Dicken, 2003). They include the search for new product markets and newly exploitable resources, most especially for cheaper recruits to a disciplined labour force. This global search is seen to have given rise to a widespread ‘locational tournament’ in which national governments Received 26 January 2005; revised 19 August 2005; accepted 20 August 2005
Ray Loveridge Embedding the Multinational
390
compete to demonstrate the attractiveness of locating foreign corporate activities within the territorial boundaries of their sovereign control (Mytelka, 2000). The attractions of FDI for the host government can be seen as lying in an external source of job-creating capital, combined with an often significant increase in export earnings. Of equal importance may be the perception held by the host government that the MNE is the carrier of ‘modernizing’ technological knowledge and attendant socializing disciplines. For many political leaders, as well as academic observers, the notion of national economic development through the alliance of local producers with MNEs has become a central tenet and aim of their acceptance of the ideology of globalization. In this sense, it is an extension
Data Loading...
