In the Hurricane′s Eye – The Troubled Prospects of Multinational Enterprises - Hardcover

Vernon, Raymond

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674445821 ISBN 13: 9780674445826

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1998

Synopsis

The world's multinational enterprises face a spell of rough weather, political economist Ray Vernon argues, not only from the host countries in which they have established their subsidiaries, but also from their home countries. Such enterprises - a few thousand in number, including Microsoft, Toyota, IBM, Siemens, Samsung, and others - now generate about half of the world's foreign trade. So any change in the relatively benign climate in which they have operated during the 1990s will create serious tensions in international economic relations. The warnings of such a change are already here. In the United States, interests such as labour are increasingly hostile to what they see as the costs and uncertainties of an open economy. In Europe, those that want to preserve the social safety net and those who feel that the net must be dismantled are increasingly at odds. In Japan, the talk of "hollowing out" takes on a new urgency as the country's "lifetime employment" practices are threatened, and as public and private institutions are subjected to unaccustomed stress. The tendency of multinationals in different countries to find common standards has been viewed as a loss of national sovereignty and a weakening of the nation-state system, producing hostile reactions in home countries. The challenge for policy makers, Raymond Vernon argues in this text, is to bridge the quite different regimes of the multinational enterprise and the nation-state. Both have a major role to play, and yet must make basic changes in their practices and policies to accomodate each other.

About this title

Review

Vernon sees TNCs in the eye of the hurricane, hence a rather gloomy prediction...In short, like any good weatherperson, Vernon has given us the warning signs. But he has done them one better. Unlike the weather, where 'everyone talks about it but no one does anything about it', Vernon's grand tour does include suggestions on how the hurricane can be avoided.--Tagi Sagafi-nejad "Transnational Corporations "

From the Back Cover

The world's multinational enterprises face a spell of rough weather, Ray Vernon argues, not only from the host countries in which they have established their subsidiaries, but also from their home countries. Such enterprises -- a few thousand in number, including Microsoft, Toyota, IBM, Siemens, and Samsung -- now generate about half of the world's industrial output and half of the world's foreign trade; thus any change in the relatively benign climate in which they have operated over the past decade will create serious tensions in international economic relations. The challenge for policymakers, Vernon argues, is to bridge the quite different regimes of the multinational enterprise and the nation-state. Both have a major role to play and must make basic changes in their practices and policies to accommodate each other.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674445821
• ISBN 13: 9780674445826
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 270