Multinational Corporations and Foreign Direct Investment

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. An opening exists for an even-handed, "no attitude" analysis that incorporates a methodology and viewpoint different from the thousands of books, articles, book chapters, and speeches written about MNCs and FDI. A large majority have failed to explicitly recognize how important perceptions, value judgments, ideology, and, sometimes, self-interest are in shaping discussions by both advocates and critics. People tend to view the FDI/MNC phenomena through differently configured lenses that have been individually molded by the unique mix of values and experiences that shapes our thinking. Evaluations of FDI and MNCs are prime examples of relatively oversimplified perceptions defining "truth". This book argues that a different route to understanding is needed and overdue: acknowledge the diversity and heterogeneity of phenomena that are lumped under very broad rubrics. MNCs are different by nature and therefore different in their respective mix of costs and benefits.

ISBN 0195179366   Pages 382 ISBN13 9780195179361 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Oxford University Press Inc   Weight (grammes) 558 Imprint Oxford University Press Inc   Published in New York Format Paperback   Height (mm) 235 Publication date 01 Mar 2007   Width (mm) 156 Library of Congress 2006010605   Spine width (mm) 17 DEWEY 338.88   Academic level Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC22

Pt. I		Fundamentals
1		A better approach to understanding foreign direct investment and multinational corporations		11
2		Defining the subject : subtleties and ambiguities		27
3		From obscurity to international economic powerhouse : the evolution of multinational corporations		41
4		Heterogeneity : the many kinds of foreign direct investment and multinational corporations and their disparate effects		62
5		Perceptions and economic ideologies		93
Pt. II		The strategy of multinationals
6		Why companies invest overseas		117
7		Where multinational corporations invest and don't invest and why		148
Pt. III		Impact on the international order
8		Effects of foreign direct investment on less developed countries : vagaries, variables, negatives, and positives		179
9		Why and how multinational corporations have altered international trade		205
10		Multinational corporations versus the nation-state : has sovereignty been outsourced?		233
11		The international regulation of multinational corporations : why there is no multilateral foreign direct investment regime		252
Pt. IV		Three bottom lines
12		The case for foreign direct investment and multinational corporations		283
13		The case against foreign direct investment and multinational corporations		308
14		An agnostic conclusion : "it depends"		332
Pt. V		Recommendations
15		An agenda for future action		355

"Professor Cohen has written a masterly and exceptionally well balanced review of recent scholarly thinking on the role of multinational corporations in our contemporary global economy. I particularly liked his eschewing of any easy generalizations about their merits and demerits; and his recognition that these are likely to vary according to the motives for and types of MNC activity, and to the policies pursued by both national governments and supranational agencies. Altogether this is an eminently readable, yet intellectually satisfying volume. I warmly commend it both to students and teachers of international political economy and international business, and to all those interested in the economic and social challenges of globalization, and one of its chief architects viz. the MNC."--John H.Dunning, University of Reading (UK) and Rutgers University

"Stephen Cohen has produced a very comprehensive, balanced and fair view of the Multinational Corporation and FDI. He presents

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