ABSTRACT
T. multin.tio",1 oo,pm.tion ,,;,,, di""ity .nd oompl"ity to n'w I",,, .nd nuk" new and unprecedented demands on top management with respect to business strategy as well as structure and behavior.
The multinational corporation is the outstanding social innovation of the period since World War II - a period otherwise lacking in social innovation and in social imagination. It has become the foremost non-nationalist institution in a world torn asunder by paroxysms of nationalist fever and an organ of integration in a world of political fission. This makes the multinational corporation important beyond its service as a business institution. But this also makes the multinational corporation a difficult and problematical institution. Indeed, the testing period is still ahead for the multinational corporation. If it cannot resolve the contradictions it has created, both internally and externally, as a result of being multinational in a nationalistic world, it is unlikely to prosper. For the multinational corporation is both cause and result - but also symbol - of a most profound event of the post-World War II period - the split between economy and sovereignty.
