MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS IN POLITICAL ENVIRONMENTS
MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS IN POLITICAL ENVIRONMENTS Ethics, Values and Strategies
by Usha C V Haley (University of New Haven, USA)
Multinational Corporations in Political Environments advances and tests a theory of why foreign corporations leave host states. Theories of international business have often ignored the complexity of corporate decisions about leaving foreign countries, generally assuming that the economic and competitive reasons that prompt multinational corporations to enter host states also explain their subsequent reasons for leaving. Alternatively, this book proposes a theory of how different stakeholders' values and ethics shape multinationals' strategic leaving behaviors. Tested in South Africa when US multinationals were facing diverse pressures from stockholders, governments and consumers to leave, the research provides a prism to isolate how different stakeholders' actions influenced multinationals' behaviors. Detailed analyses of subsidiary-level archival data over a period of four crucial years revealed that the multinationals engaged in diverse forms of leaving reflecting their involvements, strategies and stakeholders' influences. The research, the first to test which stakeholders' strategies, including boycotts and sanctions, influenced multinationals and which did not, and to identify their effects on multinationals' behaviors, has enormous implications for policy makers, managers and social activists. The book also applies the findings and explores implications for recent stakeholders' attempts at influencing multinationals and governments, such as Nike in Asia and the Burmese government, through sanctions, resolutions and boycotts.
Contents:
Multinational Corporations as Catalysts:
Multinational Corporations as Change Agents
Reassessing Theories of Multinational Corporations
Applying the Theories to South Africa during Apartheid
Multinational Corporations as Chameleons:
The Development of Multinational Corporations
Why Multinational Corporations Leave Host States
Data, Analyses and Results:
Methodology
Analyses and Results
Theoretical and Strategic Implications:
Understanding and Influencing Multinational Corporations
Readership: Academics and graduate students in international business,
international relations, strategic management and international economics.
"... an in-depth 10-year survey on South African sanctions casts new doubt on their effectiveness. Usha C V Haley, an associate professor of business at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, studied what led 322 multinationals to leave South Africa in the 1980s in her new book 'Multinational Corporations in Political Environments: Ethics, Values and Strategies' ... "
From "US Puts European Firms in the Crosshairs", by Richard Miniter Wall Street Journal Europe
"This book is likely to remain a valuable addition to the literature on the multinational firm for years to come."
Ingo Walter Charles Simon Professor of Applied Financial Economics and Director, Salomon Center, Stern School of Business New York University
"This important book is the first to study systematically why multinationals leave host states and the circumstances that prompt their leaving."
William D Guth Professor of Management and Strategy Stern School of Business New York University
"Haley is to be applauded for tackling such a complex issue head on. She does a thorough job of explaining the gaps she sees in extant theories and cogently posits why she believes these theories fall short in explaining what mode firms chose to leave South Africa in the mid-1980s and in predicting what mode would be chosen in another empirical testing ground (such as she illustrates in her mini case studies of Nike and Myanmar). A more fertile context in which to highlight [her] chameleon theory is hard to imagine ... Thought-provoking research."
Candace Agrella Martinez Academy of Management Review
296pp
Pub. date: Nov 2001
eISBN 981-238-489-8
Price: US$62
MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS IN POLITICAL ENVIRONMENTS