The rise of the Japanese multinational company (JMNC) marked, from the 1980s onwards, an historic change in the structure and in the dynamics of the international economy. For the first time, businesses from a non-Western nation established a competitive global presence, and they did so by bringing their advanced products and management systems to the developed economies of Europe and North America. In the last 30 years, our interpretations of JMNCs have undergone a series of revisions. Korean firms followed JMNCs in the 1990s and the Chinese likewise in the 2000s. A seeming decline in JMNC competitiveness and developments in the structure of the international economy challenged a business model of parental company direction, control and capabilities. Both trends asked questions about how Japanese subsidiaries should operate in global production chains increasingly reliant on contracting out and off-shoring, and how JMNCs might engage more in strategic cooperation and empower subsidiary decision-making. The contributors to this volume consider a wide range of relevant issues: they demonstrate the long-term evolution of JMNCs; they compare the experience of JMNCs with firms from the other two major Asia Pacific economies, Korea and China; they evaluate the applicability of established foreign direct investment (FDI) theory to MNCs from Japan and the Asia Pacific; and they reflect on the internal organization of JMNCs at the global, national and subnational level. This book was originally published as a special issue of Asia Pacific Business Review.

Based on their ability to facilitate interdependencies across the borders of national and regional markets, multinationals enterprises (MNEs) act as the key drivers of world trade and investment activities. While recent global challenges additionally highlight the need to explain and assess the status and progress of internationality/-regionality, previous research renders the concept of firm-level globalization as a special but not the general case. Christoph Czychon dedicates specific attention to the research on regional and global MNEs based on an extensive and rigorous review of the existing academic literature as well as the analysis of 2005-2015 empirical data from the European context with a focus on CAC40- and DAX30-listed firms. In doing so, the author offers insights and results that stand in contrast to the original narrative of the debate and presents a comprehensive and updated perspective on regional and global MNEs.

The conventional view of globalization sees it as a process driven by giant firms from the Triad regions of North America, Europe, and Japan, shaping the world in their own image. This book contests such a view, describing the extraordinary success of a handful of multinationals from the "Periphery" in globalizing their operations extremely rapidly. Focusing on Acer, the Taiwanese IT company; the Hong Leong hotel group of Singapore; Ispat International in steel; Cemex of Mexico in cement; and Li and Fung from Hong Kong in contract manufacturing, Mathews demonstrates that these firms have been able to utilize strategies of international linkage and leverage to accelerate their global coverage. He contends that they are pioneers of a new kind of global firm, indicators that the global business civilization being created in the 21st century is like to be pluralistic and diverse, offering unprecedented opportunities for firms that know how to enmesh themselves in global networks.

Multinational corporations (MNCs) are frequently pictured as being at the vanguard of global integration. They face strong incentives to maximize economies of scale in research and development, purchasing, production and marketing, and encounter low barriers in the dissemination of technologies and best practices. This special issue brings together various papers that focus on different aspects of the tension between global and local within MNCs.

This volume is excellent. Students who are interested in Asian business should read it and will find the comprehensive bibliography offered by the different contributors very helpful. In light of the recent global financial crises, it is time to re-examine the Asian miracles, as well as the Western models of business organizations and regulations. This volume offers great insights not just on Asian business but also on Western economies and business. It is also time to adopt an integrative approach recommended by Yeung through comparative research of businesses and economies in different institutions and cultures. Yifei Sun, Economic Geography An absolute must-have for college library reference shelves, filled cover-to-cover with keen analyses that any businessperson seeking to make inroads in an Asian market needs to study at length! Midwest Book Review This book serves as an important guide to the many fascinating research questions about Asian business waiting to be addressed. The study of Asian business has reached equality in importance to the study of business in Europe and North America. Researchers who study any of these regions have an incentive to follow the study of business in the other regions, if for no other reason than that many global firms from each region operate in all regions now. Nonetheless, the more important reason for knowledge transfer among researchers of each region is that these exchanges can only advance everyone s research. Henry Yeung and the contributors are to be thanked for setting out a rich agenda for research on Asian business that will elevate this study to equality with research elsewhere in the world. Eurasian Geography and Economics This book is extremely comprehensive and well researched. It will be of particular interest to scholars in the fields of international business, development studies, economic geography, regional studies as well as international and national policymakers. Science Technology & Society The rise of Asia as an important region for global business has been widely recognized as one of the most significant economic phenomena in the new millennium. This accessible and comprehensive Handbook brings together state-of-the-art reviews of Asian business in an expansive range of areas including: business organizations strategic management marketing state business relations business and development business policy issues. It is argued that whilst academic studies on Asian business have been in existence for over two decades, there is relatively little systematic integration of our knowledge and research on Asian business. The contributors, drawn from a variety of disciplines within the social sciences, aim to redress the balance with their lively, cutting-edge discussion. Serving as a timely overview of more than two decades of scholarly research, this Handbook will be an essential resource for academics, students and researchers interested in Asian business.

This book represents an eclectic collection of international research articles and empirical studies on corporate strategy, intended to equip readers with the latest knowledge to understand its theoretical and operational complexity.