ABSTRACT
Over three decades ago Hymer, a pioneer in the study of transnational production, neatly captured what he believed to be the inevitable direction in the development of the firm using the imagery of the manager’s work place. Hymer described how as the capitalist system developed so too did the nature of the firm, becoming ever more sophisticated and larger. The firm started applying both the physical and social sciences to business activity on a scale far greater than could ever have previously been imagined. This in turn ‘gave it the power to invest on a much larger time-horizon than the smaller, less developed firms that preceded it’ (Hymer 1970: 442). The manager of the small Marshallian firm, as the analogy goes, progressed from the cramped second floor offices of the local enterprise, to eventually rule from giant skyscrapers of the TNC headquarters based in the world’s major cities (predominantly in Europe, North America and Japan).1 These skyscrapers were to become so high that on a clear day the managers could ‘almost see the world’.
