Robert Pearce - The Strategic Development of Multinationals: Subsidiaries and Innovation

The Strategic Development of Multinationals

Also by Marina Papanastassiou and Robert Pearce

THE TECHNOLOGICAL COMPETITIVENESS OF JAPANESE MULTINATIONALS
The European Dimension

MULTINATIONALS, TECHNOLOGY AND NATIONAL COMPETITIVENESS

Also by Robert Pearce

MULTINATIONALS AND TRANSITION (with Julia Manea)

GLOBALISING RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT (with Satwinder Singh)

INTERNATIONAL ASPECTS OF UK ECONOMIC ACTIVITIES (with Peter J. Buckley)

GLOBAL COMPETITION AND TECHNOLOGY

PROFITABILITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE WORLDS LARGEST INDUSTRIAL COMPANIES (with John H. Dunning)

THE GROWTH AND EVOLUTION OF THE MULTINATIONAL ENTERPRISE

THE INTERNATIONALISATION OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT BY MULTINATIONAL ENTERPRISES

THE WORLDS LARGEST INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES (with John H. Dunning)

US INDUSTRY IN THE UK (with John H. Dunning)

Marina Papanastassiou and Robert Pearce

Marina Papanastassiou and Robert Pearce 2009

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First published 2009 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN

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ISBN: 978-0-230-55133-6 hardback

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09

Printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

To
Augustina and Chrissa
and to
Jonathan and Katie

Marina Papanastassiou Copenhagen Business School

Robert Pearce University of Reading

George Anastassopoulos University of Patras

Dimitra Dimitropoulou Council of Economic Advisors Greek Ministry of Economy and Finance

Fragkiskos Filippaios University of Kingston

Dimitris Manolopoulos Athens University of Economics and Business

The papers we include here have been written between 1996 and 2009. They were, in the nature of the academic process, written for a range of different purposes and in response to varied stimuli. They reflect, therefore, different areas of our interest and, in the case of four papers, different collaborative contexts. Our first acknowledgment is then to these co-authors for the distinctive contributions and insights they have provided. But for us, over this period, a fascination has been the way in which our seemingly quite diverse research agendas have both evolved organically from one to another and fallen into place as parts of a wider coherent perspective in our work. The first and last chapters of the book were written to put into place the two overview contexts we would now like to impose on our work. Firstly, that the studies become part of a much wider narrative in International Business that perceives immense strategic restructuring of MNEs as they respond to basic changes in the global economic environment over the past 40 years or so. Secondly, that this restructuring of the global strategies of MNEs defines and refocuses their interaction with many national economies. This is at the core of wider public debates about the value of MNEs. Thus a subtext of our work (taking prominence here in ) now is that trying to understand what the MNE really is and what it really seeks to do has crucial value in improving the formulation and articulation of debates on MNEs and globalization.

Against this background we have benefited enormously from two rather different modes of scholarship. Firstly, the very wide range of detailed studies that have contributed to the generation of important knowledge of the specific areas that our own work has addressed. Secondly, the analytical approach that has projected the concern with the wider picture of MNEs; their relationship to the reformulation of the global economy and the implications of their position in it. With every acknowledgement to the many researchers and authors whose work we have benefited from enormously in the former mode, we would here wish to express our gratitude to three scholars who have helped both of us in ways far beyond their defining contributions to the latter mode.

Firstly, we acknowledge in memory John Dunning and Neil Hood. To have lost John and Neil is a great personal sadness to us. A concern that we now share is that our profession and discipline may be losing the invaluable type of example that they showed us. Intellectually their awareness of the need for scholarship to understand the full picture of international business and its context, and to see its purpose as feeding knowledge back into that wider perspective, must not be lost. Also the generosity of spirit showed by these two gentlemen, as well as the many acts of personal support and kindness we both received from them, is something we must not, and will not, forget.

Happily we are still able to benefit from the considerable wisdom and support of Tamir Agmon. Tamirs wide-ranging reading and notable ability to rediscover unfairly forgotten foundation texts of our discipline have, for us, helped shine valuable light into and around the incremental minimalism of much of the current literature.

A vital supportive presence through the whole process of generating this collection has been that of Jill Turner. Jill not only typed the four completely new papers here () but also the first versions of many of the earlier ones. One of the most difficult tasks in completing the book has been finding and renovating some of these early works. Jill has performed this immensely frustrating exercise of electronic archaeology with all her usual patience and support. We are, as always, extremely grateful to Jills calm efficiency which we have not always matched or merited!

The authors and publishers are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce copyright materials.