ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the changing character of the cross-border organization of production. The last decade has witnessed fundamental shifts in ideological and political trajectories, and new attitudes and initiatives towards social and environmental issues. The accelerating pace of technological change is encapsulating time and space, and is demanding a reappraisal of tried and tested economic systems and institutional structures. It suggests that the nature of the governance of that production, at any given moment of time, is determined by the configuration of, and the interaction between, a triarchy of organizing mechanisms. It offers general comments about the important trends in the organization of international activity now beginning to emerge. The 40 years following the Second World War saw an acceleration of all forms of technological and organizational progress, which, together with a determined effort by industrialized countries to engineer and sustain a regime favorable to cross-border trade and investment, resulted in a rapid increase of all forms of international commerce.
