ABSTRACT
This monograph explores some aspects of the interface between tech nology, competitiveness and the role of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the modern world economy. In so doing it makes use of a number of paradigms and theories, but its starting point is the eclectic paradigm of international production set out in Dunning (1988). This paradigm suggests that existence and growth of firms and the location of their production will depend upon their ability, first, to generate and sustain some income-generating advantage or set of advantages over and above that of their competitors or potential competitors; second, to make the best use of these advantages, either by extending their own activities or by selling their right of use to other firms; and, third, to choose the most effective locations to create these advantages and to produce value-added activity and co-ordinate inter- and intra-firm trans actions arising from them. The paradigm draws upon two main streams of economic thought; they are the theory of the distribution of factor endowments and the theory of economic organization, and particularly that part of each concerned with the relative efficiencies of markets and hierarchies in allocating resources both between and within sectors.
