ABSTRACT
The multinational corporation (MNC) has become one of the dominant actors in globalization and
We begin the chapter with a definition of the multinational corporation (MNC), followed by an analysis
these firms and the geographical reach of their operations. MNCs are fundamental to the operation of the global economy, representing one of the principal mechanisms through which global economic integration takes place. Through their geographically dispersed production networks, MNCs connect up different places in increasingly complex international divisions of labour. In contrast with the hyper-reality and virtual spaces of global financial networks, MNCs’ organizational networks seem to provide a more tangible and material economic geography of globalization. MNCs are increasingly at the heart of ‘webs of enterprise’ (Dicken, 2003a) that connect headquarters, assembly plants, research and development facilities and increasingly complex supply chains to produce individual goods and services. Despite having this critical role in the functioning of the global economy, it is important to dispel the image of all-powerful, ‘placeless’ organizations that characterizes some of the business and media literatures (e.g. Ohmae, 1990). Instead, as we will demonstrate in this chapter, to understand the workings of MNCs we need to appreciate their diverse organizational geographies. While they may operate trans-nationally, individual MNCs create their own organizational geographies, influenced both by the national and regional business cultures from which they originate, and by the
characteristics of the regions in which they locate. For this reason, we prefer to use the term multinational here rather than trans-national. This is to signify corporations that operate in more than one country but that are geographically embedded or rooted in particular places, rather than the popular notion that corporations are now footloose and not tied to anywhere, hence ‘trans-national’ (section 6.4).
