This book examines the economic environment and phenomena of multinational business with reference to case studies of major multinational companies, including IBM, Philips, Nissan and Volvo. It assesses how the major theories explaining the response of companies to changes are borne out by the experience of individual firms.

This volume assesses the situation for multinationals at the beginning of the 1990s, bringing together contributions from academics recognized as world leaders in the field and from practitioners with wide experience in international management. Drawing on perspectives from Europe, the USA and Japan, the contributors outline the shape of the global firm of the future. They focus squarely on the development of the corporation as a whole, rather than on the narrow management of individual foreign subsidiaries, and they also explore the specific implications for areas such as strategic planning systems, financial management, information systems and R & D management.

This book is a study of the economics of the large international firm, but is at the same time a study of one of the world’s most important industries. International firms face difficult problems in attempting to deal with the conflicts between their own interest as world-wide economic organisations on the one hand, that of the countries in which they operate on the other, and with the conflicts of interest among the countries which are related to the international policies of the firms. The author analyses the underlying problems and points to possible solutions. When it was first published this was the first book by a professional economist to look widely at the economics of the international petroleum industry outside the industrialized countries.

This book integrates the work of economists, management scientists and business historians. It applies the related concepts of transaction costs, internalisation, corporate strategy and market structure to explain the historical process of corporate growth in the international economy. Each chapter is written by a scholar who has specialized in a particular aspect of the growth of international business.

This book, an outcome of the conference in 1983 held at the University of Birmingham, examines the varied roles played by multinational corporations in the economies of the Third World countries and concentrates more closely on regional, national, sectoral or corporate levels.

This book explores some aspects of the interface between technology, competitiveness and the role of multinational enterprises in the world economy. This group of essays stresses the role of asset creation and usage, rather than reliance on natural factor endowments as a basis for national competitiveness and examines the role of multinational enterprises as vehicles for technological transfer, and the efficient co-ordination of economic activity across national boundaries.