C.J. Dixon - Multinational Corporations And The Third World

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Multinational Corporations and the Third World

First published 1986 by Westview Press

Published 2018 by Routledge

52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 1986 C.J. Dixon, D. Drakakis-Smith and H.D. Watts

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Library of Congress Catalog Card No: IS86-50207

ISBN 0-8133-0405-9 (Westview)

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-00665-5 (hbk)

C.J. Dixon, D. Drakakis-Smith and H.D. Watts

F.E.I. Hamilton

G. Manners

S. M. Cunningham

S.W. Williams

J.W. Henderson

R.N. Gwynne

C.M. Rogerson and B.A. Tucker

R.M. Auty

Guide

Tables

Figures

The purpose of this volume is to examine the varied roles played by multinational corporations in the economies of the Third World countries. Since the early 1960s there has been an explosion of publications on multinational corporations, however comparatively few have focused directly on multinational activities in the Third World.

The present volume has its origins in the papers presented at a conference held in November 1983 at the University of Birmingham under the auspices of the Developing Areas Research Group and the Industrial Activity and Area Development Study Group of the Institute of British Geographers.

BIAC	Business and Industry Advisory Committee of the OECD
c.i.f.	Cost, Insurance and Freight
CMEA	Council for Mutual Economic Aid
DC	Developed Country
DoD	Department of Defense (USA)
FDI	Foreign Direct Investment
FMS	Foreign Military Sales
GATT	General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GDP	Gross Domestic Product
ILO	International Labour Office
IRM	Institute for Research and Information on Multinationals
ISI	Import Substitution Industrialization
ISIC	International Standard Industrial Classification
LDC	Less Developed Country
LSI	Large Scale Integrated-circuitry
MNC	Multinational Corporation
MNRC	Multinational Resource Corporation
NIC	Newly Industrializing Country
NIDL	New International Division of Labour
NIEO	New International Economic Order
OECD	Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
OPEC	Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
R&D	Research and Development
SIPRI	Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
UNCTNC	United Nations Centre for the Study of Transnational Corporations
UNELA	United Nations Economic Organization for Latin America
UNIDO	United Nations Industrial Development Organization
VLSI	Very Large Scale Integrated-circuitry.

C.J. Dixon, D. Drakakis-Smith and H.D. Watts

The International Context

Multinational corporations have been of significance in the world economy since the colonial era. Lenin (1916), for example, analysed the increasing flow of capital to the colonial and semi-colonial territories as well as the emergence of multinational production and finance corporations. These developments were explained at the time largely as responses to higher potential rates of return on capital (Lenin, 1916; Bukharin, 1917).

Steady acceleration of this process occurred through the late colonial and early independence periods, although fluctuating world commodity markets acted as a moderating influence. It is really since the 1960s that MNCs (Multinational Corporations) have emerged as a dominant force. During the last twenty-five years the world economy has been characterized by a growing internationalization of production and finance, together with increased concentration of ownership.

Such processes have been closely linked to fundamental changes in production, distribution and communications which have enabled spatial separation of, for example, manufacturing, research, marketing and management across a global scale. A driving force behind these developments was the falling level of profit in many industries, but particularly the labour intensive ones, in most advanced economies. The emergence of the multinational corporations to their present dominant position in the world economy was both an integral part of this process as well as a consequence.

Since the 1960s, therefore, the structure of international finance and production has undergone a qualitative transformation. Analysis of this new structure has given rise to a series of new terms, most notably the New International Division of Labour (NIDL), Newly Industrializing Countries (NICs) and deindustrialization. These terms did not represent a marked departure in the form of analysis of the world economy, rather they were responses to the challenge of understanding a qualitatively different situation. In this analysis multinational corporations were found to be playing an increasingly dominant role and to have formed the focus of an increasing volume of literature.

From the late 1970s the extent of the deceleration in the world economy, which had begun a decade earlier, was exposing basic structural weaknesses. The long post-1945 boom and its financial and production underpinnings were showing signs of collapse. In 1971 President Nixon ended the parity of the US dollar with gold, heralding the breakdown of the Bretton Woods based structure of international finance. This and subsequent events, such as the oil price rises of 1974 and 1979, the collapse of commodity prices between 1979 and 1981, and the drying up of recycled petro-dollars as a major source of international finance, were all symptoms of the changes in the world economy rather than causal factors.

During these events the multinational corporations continued to expand their activities not only in terms of manufacturing or resource exploitation, but also as major sources of finance. The multinational provided a steadily increasing proportion of the foreign direct investment flowing into the Third World. These expanding financial activities of the multinational corporations, together with those of the multinational banks, have become decisive factors in Third World economic activity.

As a consequence, despite the deepening recession, those Third World countries with extensive and largely multinational controlled and financed manufacturing sectors continued to exhibit rapid rates of growth for both GDP and exports. For example, between 1970 and 1980 the South Korean economy maintained an average annual growth rate of 10.1 per cent for GDP and 37.2 per cent for exports. Even economies with comparatively small manufacturing sectors participated in this growth with Thailand, for example, maintaining an average annual GDP growth rate of 6.9 per cent for the same period.

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