Multinational corporations and foreign direct investment :
General Material Designation
[Book]
Other Title Information
avoiding simplicity, embracing complexity /
First Statement of Responsibility
Stephen D. Cohen.
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Place of Publication, Distribution, etc.
New York :
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
Oxford University Press,
Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.
2007.
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item
ix, 371 pages ;
Dimensions
24 cm
INTERNAL BIBLIOGRAPHIES/INDEXES NOTE
Text of Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
CONTENTS NOTE
Text of Note
Introduction -- pt. I. Fundamentals -- 1. A better approach to understanding foreign direct investment and multinational corporations -- 2. Defining the subject : subtleties and ambiguities -- 3. From obscurity to international economic powerhouse : the evolution of multinational corporations -- 4. Heterogeneity : the many kinds of foreign direct investment and multinational corporations and their disparate effects -- 5. Perceptions and economic ideologies -- pt. II. The strategy of multinationals -- 6. Why companies invest overseas -- 7. Where multinational corporations invest and don't invest and why -- pt. III. Impact on the international order -- 8. Effects of foreign direct investment on less developed countries : vagaries, variables, negatives, and positives -- 9. Why and how multinational corporations have altered international trade -- 10. Multinational corporations versus the nation-state : has sovereignty been outsourced? -- 11. The international regulation of multinational corporations : why there is no multilateral foreign direct investment regime -- 12. The case for foreign direct investment and multinational corporations -- 13. The case against foreign direct investment and multinational corporations -- 14. An agnostic conclusion : "it depends" -- pt. 5. Recommendations -- 15. An agenda for future action.
0
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
"The integrating thesis of this study is the inevitability of heterogeneity in FDI and MNCs and, accordingly, the imperative of disaggregation. Nuance is too pervasive to permit many valid generalizations. This leads to a hardly earth-shattering, but surprisingly infrequently-offered conclusion that FDI, i.e. that any individual foreign-owned subsidiaries can, on balance, have a positive, negative, neutral (and/or irrelevant), or indeterminate effect. Foreign-owned subsidiaries are seldom if ever identical and need to be considered on a case by case basis according to circumstances. Hence, the phrase "it depends" is the mantra of this study. Disaggregation is an essential diagnostic tool to identify and measure the different levels of quality of MNCs subsidiaries. Most policy advocates and researchers, whatever their ideological persuasion, have failed to acknowledge the seemingly obvious: different kinds of businesses engage in different kinds of corporate activity and diverse results. The result of different input is different output. A nearly limitless number of characteristics are associated with three main variables: the nature and the effects of tens of thousands of individual foreign subsidiaries plus conditions in countries where they are located. MNCs are better described as the middlemen of change since they themselves are largely the effect of even larger phenomena, namely technological changes that restructure the international economic order."--Publisher description.
OTHER EDITION IN ANOTHER MEDIUM
Title
Multinational corporations and foreign direct investment.