The multinational paradigm

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

The multinational paradigm

Robert Z. Aliber

MIT Press, c1993

Available at  / 59 libraries

Search this Book/Journal

Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [269]-272) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

"The Multinational Paradigm" represents a new direction in understanding the multinational corporation. Aliber suggests that changes in the relative rates of economic growth of countries lead to changes in exchange rates that have an important impact on the financing, sourcing, and marketing decisions and practices of individual firms. He provides a perspective for examining what is different about business in a global context by placing these decisions in the framework of the multinational paradigm - the choice between whether the firm should centralize or decentralize its production, marketing, and finance and the factors involved in this trade-off. Aliber's theory is the first to adequately explain why the flow of direct foreign investment shifted in the 1980s toward the US as a host country. In a framework that Aliber calls "the Andy Warhol view of countries in the world economy" he proposes that every country has a short time span (15, 20 or perhaps even 30 years) during which it grows rapidly; thus individual countries experience growth at different times. He argues that during this growth period real interest rates and profit rates are high, capital flows to the country, and its currency appreciates. New firms are formed at an increasingly rapid rate, and the average age of both the labour force and the industrial plant and equipment of the typical firm decreases. When the growth rate within a country slows, these conditions are reversed. In separate chapters, Aliber discusses the implications of changes in growth rates of individual countries for strategic management and for financing decisions (currency denomination of a firm's debt, cash management practices, capital budgeting). He applies the multinational paradigm to decisions about location of plants and to the trade-offs between global and national marketing. Changes in the pattern of direct foreign investment are analyzed and conflicts between host governments and multinational corporations are evaluated in terms of the paradigm.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction 2 National Growth Rates and the Strategies of Multinational Firms 3 International Financial Management and the Multinational Paradigm 4 Production, Marketing, and the Multinational Paradigm 5 The Theory of Direct Foreign Investment and the Multinational Paradigm 6 The Distribution of Gains from Centralization: Conflicts between Multinational Firms and National Governments 7 Conclusion Notes References Index.

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

Page Top