The current financial and economic crisis has negatively underlined the vital role of multinational companies (MNCs) in our daily lives. The breakdown and crisis of flagship MNCs, such as Enron, WorldCom, Lehman Brothers, Toyota and General Motors, does not merely reveal the problems of corporate malfeasance and market dysfunction. It also raises important questions, both for the public and the academic community, about the use and misuse of power by MNCs in the wider society, as well as the exercise of power by key actors within internationally operating firms. This book examines how issues of power and politics affect MNCs at three different levels; the macro-level, the meso-level and the micro-level. This wide-ranging analysis shows not only that power matters but also how and why it matters, pointing to the political interactions of key power holders and actors within the MNC, both managers and employees.
Contents
List of figures; List of tables;
Foreword (Ram Mudambi)
Part I. Introduction:
1. Politics and power in the multinational corporation: an introduction
Mike Geppert and Christoph Dörrenböcher;
Part II. Politics and Power in MNCs: Institutions, Social
Embeddedness and Knowledge:
2. Resource dependence and construction, and macro and micro politics
in transnational enterprises and alliances: the case of jet engine
manufacturers in Germany (Arndt Sorge and Katja Rothe)
3. Bargained globalisation: employment relations providing robust 'tool
kits' for socio-political strategizing in MNCs in Germany (Karen
Williams and Mike Geppert)
4. Bridging roles, social skill and embedded knowing in multinational
organisations (Mark Fenton-O'Creevy, Paul Gooderham, Jean-Luc Cerdin
and Rune Ronning)
Part III. Politics and Power in MNCs: Headquarters-Subsidiary
Relations:
5. Conflict in headquarters-subsidiary relations: a critical literature
review and new directions (Susanne Blazejewski and Florian
Becker-Ritterspach)
6. Intra-organizational turbulences in multinational corporations
(Andreas Schotter and Paul W. Beamish)
7. Conflicts in headquarters-subsidiary relationships:
headquarters-driven charter losses in foreign subsidiaries (Christoph
Dörrenbächer and Jens Gammelgaard)
8. Headquarters-subsidiary relationships from a social psychological
perspective: how perception gaps concerning the subsidiary's role may
lead to conflict (Stefan Schmid and Andrea Daniel)
Part IV. Politics and Power in MNCs: Role of National Identities
and Identity Work:
9. Subsidiary manager socio-political interaction: the impact of host
country culture (Christopher Williams)
10. Unequal power relations, identity discourse, and cultural
distinction drawing in MNCs (Sierk Ybema and Hyunghae Byun)
11. National identities in times of organizational globalization: a
case study of Russian managers in two Finnish-Russian organizations
(Alexei Koveshnikov)
12. Contesting social space in the Balkan region: the social dimensions
of a 'Red' joint venture Mairi (Maclean and Graham Hollinshead)
Part V. Conclusions:
13. Reflections on the macro-politics of micro-politics (Glenn Morgan)
Index.
Reviews
'This collection of original research-based contributions takes our understanding way beyond that previously offered by mainstream studies of power and politics in the multinational corporation. It provides new insights into political dynamics within multinationals and how these are informed by the socio-cultural identities of key actors as well as conditioned by local institutional and cultural factors. From reading this book we can appreciate how apparently mighty and monolithic corporations often lack the cohesion and rationality they like to portray.' (John Child, Emeritus Chair of Commerce, University of Birmingham)
'International business and research into multinationals has, on the whole, not been characterised by a concern with power relations. While this is something that might strike many social scientists as odd it has hardly been remarked by many of the narrower specialists in the field. Christoph Dörrenbächer and Mike Geppert, together with the assemblage of scholars and commentators that they have collected in this volume, are a notable exception to the general tendency. The focus on power relations as the essence of business activity on a global scale is long overdue. From various and diverse frameworks the contributors to this volume rectify the picture.' (Stewart Clegg, Professor and Research Director, Centre for Management and Organization Studies (CMOS), University of Technology, Sydney)