ABSTRACT
The essential and unique characteristic of the manufacturing multinational enterprise (MNE) is that it owns and/or controls resources engaged in production outside the country in which it is based. Because of this its behaviour is likely to be different from that of a purely national company. But this feature, by itself, is not sufficient to account for the great interest and concern aroused by MNEs since the second world war, rather it is the combination of multinationality and certain other characteristics, which may be found in national and multinational firms alike, that is responsible. Paramount among these is the huge size of the typical MNE. In the motor industry a dozen giant enterprises produce the great bulk of the world's output of vehicles outside the Communist countries and, for the year 1976, their consolidated sales ranged from General Motors’ 47 billion (thousand million) dollars to Volvo's 3.6 billion. 1 Related to size is the oligopolistic structure of the industries from which most MNEs have originated, together with the emphasis on product differentiation and extensive advertising associated with such an industry structure. Of great importance also is the fact that MNEs are generally found in industries dominated by advanced technology. They account for the bulk of research and development expenditures in these industries and they are the major innovators. 2 Much of their economic power is derived from this. In short, MNEs are typically very large organisations owning and/or controlling an international network of productive resources, and operating in high-technology industries, oligopolistic in structure.
