A multinational corporation or multinational enterprise is an organization that owns or controls productions of goods or services in one or more countries other than the home country. It can also be referred as an international corporation, a "transnational corporation", or as a stateless corporation.
Overview
A multinational corporation is usually a large corporation which produces or sells goods or services in various countries. It may be attributed as multinational corporation when a corporation is registered in more than one country or has operations in more than one country.
Multinational corporations take many different forms and engage in many different activities:
- Importing and exporting goods and services
- Making significant investments in a foreign country
- Buying and selling licenses in foreign markets
- Engaging in contract manufacturingâ€"permitting a local manufacture in a foreign country to produce their products
- Opening manufacturing facilities or assembly operations in foreign countries
The problem of moral and legal guiding behaviors of multinational corporations, given that they are effectively "stateless" actors, is one of the urgent global socioeconomic problems that emerged during the late twentieth century.
One of the first multinational business organizations, East India Company, arose in 1600. After East India Company, came Dutch East India Company, founded March 20, 1602, which would become the largest company in the world for nearly 200 years.
Theoretical Background
The actions of multinational corporations are strongly supported by economic liberalism and free market system in a globalized international society. According to economic realist view, individuals act in rational ways to maximize their self-interest and therefore, when individuals act rationally, markets are created and they function best in free market system where there is little government interference. As a result, international wealth is maximized with free exchange of goods and services.
To many economic liberals, multinational corporations are the vanguard of the liberal order. They are the embodiment par excellence of the liberal ideal of an interdependent world economy. They have taken the integration of national economies beyond trade and money to the internationalization of production. For the first time in history, production, marketing, and investment are being organized on a global scale rather than in terms of isolated national economies.
To liberals, multinational corporations are a positive development. MNCs invest in capital stock worldwide, which eventually leads to economic growth. MNCs prefer to act independently of states and if there is any problem, the market will regulate their behavior instead of government regulation policy.
Transnational corporations
A transnational corporation differs from a traditional multinational corporation in that it does not identify itself with one national home. While traditional multinational corporations are national companies with foreign subsidiaries, Transnational corporations spread out their operations in many countries sustaining high levels of local responsiveness.
An example of a transnational corporation is Nestlé who employ senior executives from many countries and try to make decisions from a global perspective rather than from one centralized headquarters.
Another example of a Transnational Corporation is the Royal Dutch Shell corporation whose headquarters may be in The Hague, Netherlands but its registered office and main executive body where the decisions are made is headquartered in London, United Kingdom.
Multinational corporations and colonialism
The history of multinational corporations is closely intertwined with the history of colonialism, with the first multinational corporations founded to undertake colonial expeditions at the behest of their European monarchical patrons. Prior to the era of New Imperialism, a majority European colonies not held by the Spanish and Portuguese crowns were administered by chartered multinational corporations. Examples of such corporations include the British East India Company, the Swedish Africa Company, and the Hudson’s Bay Company. These early corporations facilitated colonialism by engaging in international trade and exploration, and creating colonial trading posts. Many of these corporations, such as the South Australia Company and the Virginia Company, played a direct role in formal colonization by creating and maintaining settler colonies. Without exception these early corporations created differential economic outcomes between their home country and their colonies via a process of exploiting colonial resources and labour, and investing the resultant profits and net gain in the home country. The end result of this process was the enrichment of the colonizer and the impoverishment of the colonized. Some multinational corporations, such as the Royal African Company, were also responsible for the logistical component of the Atlantic Slave Trade, maintaining the ships and ports required for this vast enterprise. During the 19th century formal corporate rule over colonial holdings largely gave way to state-controlled colonies, however corporate control over colonial economic affairs persisted in a majority of colonies.
During the process of decolonization the European colonial charter companies were disbanded, with the final colonial corporation, the Mozambique Company, dissolving in 1972. However the economic impact of corporate colonial exploitation has proved to be lasting and far reaching, with some commentators asserting that this impact is among the chief causes of contemporary global income inequality.
Contemporary critics of multinational corporations have charged that some present day multinational corporations follow the pattern of exploitation and differential wealth distribution established by the now defunct colonial charter corporations, particularly with regards to corporations based in the developed world that operate resource extraction enterprises in the developing world, such as Royal Dutch Shell, and Barrick Gold. Some of these critics argue that the operations of multinational corporations in the developing world take place within the broader context of neocolonialism.
Criticism of multinationals
Anti-corporate advocates criticize multinational corporations for entering countries that have low human rights or environmental standards. In the world economy facilitated by multinational corporations, capital will increasingly be able to play workers, communities, and nations off against one another as they demand tax, regulation and wage concessions while threatening to move. In other words, increased mobility of multinational corporations benefit capital while workers and communities lose. Some negative outcomes generated by multinational corporations include increased inequality, unemployment, and wage stagnation.
The aggressive use of tax avoidance schemes allows multinational corporations to gain competitive advantages over small and medium-sized enterprises. Organizations such as the Tax Justice Network criticize governments for allowing multinational organizations to escape tax since less money can be spent for public services.
See also
- Corporation
- Globalization
- Global workforce
- List of multinational corporations
- World economy
- Economic liberalism
- Free market
References
External links
- Data on transnational corporations
- UNCTAD publications on multinational corporations