Multinational Corporations - Bibliography
Barnet, Richard J., and Ronald E. Müller. Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporations. New York, 1974. This indictment of multinational corporations argues that MNCs constitute a state within a state. Well-researched but not entirely persuasive.
Doremus, Paul N., et al. The Myth of the Global Corporation. Princeton, N.J., 1998. Persuasively argues against the widely held view that multinational enterprises are able to act autonomously in international economic matters.
Ferguson, Niall. The House of Rothschild: The World's Banker, 1849–1999. New York, 1999. The second of a two-volume history of one of the great international banking houses of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
James, Harold. The End of Globalization: Lessons from the Great Depression. Cambridge, Mass., 2001. Argues that, while there are parallels between today's situation and the end of the movement toward globalization following the Great Depression, one of the essential developments of the 1930s—economic nationalism tied to two of the major powers of the era, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union—is not in evidence in the early twenty-first century.
Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. World Class: Thriving Locally in the Global Economy. New York, 1995. Points to the difficulty of multinational corporations blending in with the local communities of their host nations.
Kapstein, Ethan B. "Workers and the World Economy." Foreign Affairs 75 (May–June 1996): 16–37. Argues that the global economy, with its implicit promise of a better life for the working class, has not lived up to that promise primarily because the institutional structure established after World War II to support economic growth and development has forced many governments to follow stringent fiscal policies at labor's expense.
Kaufman, Burton I. The Oil Cartel Case: A Documentary Study of Antitrust Activity in the Cold War. Westport, Conn., 1978. A history in which the author argues that Washington used the oil companies to achieve its foreign policy objectives.
Moran, Theodore H. Foreign Direct Investment and Development: The New Policy Agenda for Developing Countries and Economies in Transition. Washington, D.C., 1998. Emphasizes the positive role that foreign direct investment can play in developing countries and those nations moving toward a free market economy.
Nathan, John. Sony: The Private Life. New York, 1999. Fascinating history of one of Japan's great success stories after World War II.
Rangan, Subramanian, and Robert Z. Lawrence. A Prism on Globalization: Corporate Responses to the Dollar. Washington, D.C., 1999. Argues that multinational corporations have worked to assure currency stability rather than the flexible rates characteristic of the 1980s because that is what their customers prefer.
Rodrick, Dani. Has Globalization Gone Too Far? Washington, D.C., 1997. Argues that globalization, including the expansion of the multinationals, may indeed have gone too far and that governments need to be more sensitive to the domestic ramifications resulting from economic globalization.
Sampson, Anthony. The Sovereign State of ITT. New York, 1973. Maintains that, through ruthless and sometimes illicit practices, ITT, one of the largest conglomerates of the 1960s and 1970s, became a worldwide business empire that defied control by any sovereign nation.
——. The Seven Sisters: The Great Oil Companies and the World They Shaped. New York, 1975. Adopts the argument that multinational corporations have had excessive control over the formulation of American foreign policy, but an important study and a solid history.
Spar, Debora L. "The Spotlight and the Bottom Line." Foreign Affairs 77 (March–April, 1998): 7–12. Maintains that, instead of exploiting foreign workers with low wages and unsafe working conditions, multinational manufacturers of consumer goods have actually helped to promote human rights because of the impact of the public spotlight and human rights activism.
Vernon, Raymond. Sovereignty at Bay. New York, 1971. Classic study of multinational corporations that traces their growth and the challenge they pose for sovereign nations.
——. In the Hurricane's Eye: The Troubled Prospects of Multinational Enterprises. Cambridge, Mass., 1998. Maintains that multinationals are facing increasing efforts by host and home governments to regulate their operations as a result of an increasingly hostile domestic environment.
Wilkins, Mira. The Emergence of Multinational Enterprise: American Business from the Colonial Era to 1914. Cambridge, Mass., 1970. The first of a two-volume study; deeply researched and thorough and comprehensive in coverage.
——. The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise: American Business Abroad from 1914 to 1970. Cambridge, Mass., 1974. The second volume of Wilkins's classic study and the place to start for any study on the subject.
Wolf, Martin. "Will the Nation-State Survive Globalization?" Foreign Affairs 80 (January–February 2001): 178–190. Argues that nation-states will become stronger rather than weaker in the evolving international economy, and that further globalization will not be the destined result of market forces associated with the technological revolution but rather of conscious decision by nationstates to enhance their economic well-being.