Search results

Stephen Kobrin's contributions to international management scholarship are highly influential to the field as it has evolved over the past four decades. They include important insights into political risk, business–government relations, FDI theory and corporate social responsibility. His most recent work has leveraged historical perspectives to inform the emerging nature of the global business environment, with particular attention to the emergence of a globally networked economy and its implications for the range of stakeholders – business, government, non-governmental organizations and citizens. In this chapter, I reflect on Kobrin's contributions from the past to the present, summarizing some of the most important and substantial contributions and offering personal reflections on how those insights have affected the field and leading scholars within it.

This chapter is a commentary on Kobrin's essay on the current transition to the transnational era where there is a shift in the balance of power from sovereign states to non-state stakeholders and what role the multinational corporation (MNC) plays in this transition. It celebrates Kobrin's long-established scholarship and discusses his recent thinking regarding the new reconceptualization of space, the fragmentation of political authority and the intermingling of public and private spheres, in the context of transnational governance. In his essay, Kobrin raises many interesting questions and opens new avenues for inter-disciplinary research on the MNC in the up-and-coming transnational era.

Economic nationalism and the COVID-19 pandemic have led many to question the future of globalization. Given the fragility of the second wave, this chapter asks whether globalization is cyclical, sustainable only under the most propitious economic or political conditions or whether technological developments, especially the digital revolution, have changed the underlying structure of production in ways that markedly increase the cost of renationalization. Global production networks (GPNs) are discussed as an example of structural change, the emergence of a networked world economy that is both more extensive and intensive than in the past. The chapter concludes that the international economic environment will be unstable, as attempts to restore national independence and disaggregate GPNs run up against the reality of mutual dependence. While we are unlikely to return to independent national markets, the future shape of globalization is uncertain.

Virtually all of the literature of the MNC assumes that the modern or Westphalian international order of geographically defined sovereign states is the context in which international business takes place. I argue that we are in the midst of a deep-seated systemic transformation to a transnational or post-Westphalian world order characterized by a redefinition of space and geography, the fragmentation of political authority and a more diffuse distinction between public and private spheres. The emergence of a transnational order will have significant implications for the multinational firm in terms of the depth of its involvement in politics and how it formulates strategy. MNCs will both be subject to and a participant in governance, the latter in terms of hybrid public–private regimes. Strategy will have to be reformulated to incorporate a non-territorial context where firms function as actors in the international political process.

The increase in multinational companies and the rising level of global interdependency has brought to light the crucial need of producing business graduates who can successfully function and compete in an international society. It has become imperative that colleges of business not only produce graduates with all the qualities that make good managers in national companies but also with those qualities that will enable graduates to function in multinational companies. With multicultural employees increasing in number in American companies, international companies moving into the US, and US companies functioning internationally, it is imperative for today's business graduates to develop international business skills.

Few dispute the very strong likelihood that within twenty years the global information infrastructure, often referred to as the internet or “the net” will become as generalized, indispensable and invisible as today”s phone or electrical networks. Many commentators also expect this digital web to become the host for cyberspace, the next frontier. This article provides an overview of where a wide range of experts from business, government and the academic world believe this rapidly expanding global information infrastructure is heading over the next two decades.

Theories on international trade and investment as well as those relating the nature of the product to the length of the channel suggest that mode of entry decisions should result from the analysis of a wide variety of factors. The purpose of this article is to show how such theories might be related to practice through the development of decision support tools. Emphasis is given to a microcomputer software package developed to aid international mode of entry assessment.

The International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes, written by the World Health Organization and joined in by the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), was passed by the World Health Assembly in mid‐1981. Intended as a model statute for member nations to adopt, it is now at the centre of a controversy that is both complex and dynamic. This controversy is simultaneously one of humanitarianism, community health, business, and — most of all — law. No doubt most readers are familiar with the heated campaigns of the past few years against infant formula distribution in the Third World. Today the weight of public opinion in most developed countries is with the Code, but that does not necessarily imply ultimate adoption and implementation in other countries. This article attempts, while taking no position on the Code's merits, to examine its possible future. Specifically, (1) Will the Code be adopted and implemented? (2) What is the context in which such decisions will be made?