ABSTRACT
This volume is concerned with foreign-owned companies in the United States. During the postwar decades academic and media attention was focused on the enormous size and impact of US multinationals on foreign countries. They were variously lauded for transferring superior US management and organizational skills to the recipient countries (Dunning 1958) and condemned for their threat to national sovereignty (Servan Schreiber 1968). Multinationals were often treated as synonymous with American firms, and the reverse story – of foreign companies in the United States – was barely considered an issue. An article in the leading journal for the study of multinationals, Journal of International Business Studies, published in 1974, observed that ‘almost nothing is known about foreign manufacturing investments in the United States’ (Arpan and Ricks 1974). By then, however, foreign multinational investment in the United States was mounting. Twenty years later foreign investment in the United States was almost equal to American investment overseas. There has over this period emerged an extensive literature on the growth and impact of foreign business, written both by scholars and by others concerned especially to warn of its alleged dangers and threats.
