The Political Power of Global Corporations

The Political Power of Global Corporations
Author: John Mikler
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2018-02-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0745698492

We have long been told that corporations rule the world, their interests seemingly taking precedence over states and their citizens. Yet, while states, civil society, and international organizations are well drawn in terms of their institutions, ideologies, and functions, the world's global corporations are often more simply sketched as mechanisms of profit maximization. In this book, John Mikler re-casts global corporations as political actors with complex identities and strategies. Debunking the idea of global corporations as exclusively profit-driven entities, he shows how they seek not only to drive or modify the agendas of states but to govern in their own right. He also explains why we need to re-territorialize global corporations as political actors that reflect and project the political power of the states and regions from which they hail. We know the global corporations' names, we know where they are headquartered, and we know where they invest and operate. Economic processes are increasingly produced by the control they possess, the relationships they have, the leverage they employ, the strategic decisions they make, and the discourses they create to enhance acceptance of their interests. This book represents a call to study how they do so, rather than making assumptions based on theoretical abstractions.

The Myth of the Global Corporation

The Myth of the Global Corporation
Author: Paul Doremus
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2021-01-12
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0691223874

Critics and defenders of multinational corporations often agree on at least one thing: that the activities of multinationals are creating an overwhelmingly powerful global market that is quickly rendering national borders obsolete. The authors of this book, however, argue that such expectations commonly rest on a myth. They examine key activities of multinational corporations in the United States, Japan, and Europe and explore the relationship between corporate behavior and national institutions and cultures. They demonstrate that the world's leading multinationals continue to be shaped decisively by the policies and values of their home countries and that their core operations are not converging to create a seamless global market. With a wealth of fresh evidence, the authors show that Japanese and German multinationals, in particular, remain only weakly committed to laissez-faire policy orientations and continue to exhibit strong allegiance to national goals in such areas as investment and employment. They also bring to light the consequences of enduring differences in government policies on, for example, industrial cartels, capital markets, and research and development. The authors agree that the world economy is becoming more complex and integrated as overt barriers to trade and investment fall away. But they conclude that the extent of this integration is decisively limited by structural divergence at the level of the firm. The book will be essential reading for those seeking to understand the growing interdependence of still-distinctive industrial societies and the wellsprings of the true global economy.

Tata

Tata
Author: Mircea Raianu
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2021-07-06
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 067498451X

An eye-opening portrait of global capitalism spanning 150 years, told through the history of the Tata corporation. Nearly a century old, the grand faade of Bombay House is hard to miss in the historic business district of Mumbai. This is the iconic global headquarters of the Tata Group, a multinational corporation that produces everything from salt to software. After getting their start in the cotton and opium trades, the Tatas, a Parsi family from Navsari, Gujarat, ascended to commanding heights in the Indian economy by the time of independence in 1947. Over the course of its 150-year history Tata spun textiles, forged steel, generated hydroelectric power, and took to the skies. It also faced challenges from restive workers fighting for their rights and political leaders who sought to curb its power. In this sweeping history, Mircea Raianu tracks the fortunes of a family-run business that was born during the high noon of the British Empire and went on to capture the worldÕs attention with the headline-making acquisition of luxury car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover. The growth of Tata was a complex process shaped by world historical forces: the eclipse of imperial free trade, the intertwined rise of nationalism and the developmental state, and finally the return of globalization and market liberalization. Today Tata is the leading light of one of the worldÕs major economies, selling steel, chemicals, food, financial services, and nearly everything else, while operating philanthropic institutions that channel expert knowledge in fields such as engineering and medicine. Based on painstaking research in the companyÕs archive, Tata elucidates how a titan of industry was created and what lessons its story may hold for the future of global capitalism.

The Rise of the Global Company

The Rise of the Global Company
Author: Robert Fitzgerald
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 635
Release: 2015
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0521849748

Readable, wide-ranging history of multinational enterprise, exploring its role in international events and influence on globalization and the modern world.

Global Corporations in Global Governance

Global Corporations in Global Governance
Author: Christopher May
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2015-03-24
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1134744331

This book offers a concise and accessible overview and analysis of the place of large multinational and regional corporations in the political economy of global governance.May argues that not only do corporations have an impact on the institutions of global governance, but they must be understood as a multifaceted institution of global governance in their own right, controlling and shaping significant aspects of the global political economy. Topics include: What are global corporations? Corporations and global governance The legal personality of the corporation Corporations and power Corporations and tax The future role of corporations in a post crisis global system Highlighting the central role of corporations in the generation and reproduction of norms in global governance, this work shows that corporations’ practices and relations are themselves both subjects, and sources of, global governance. It offers an enhanced understanding of the complex of issues that pattern the corporate global governance in the contemporary political economy and will be of interest to students in areas including IPE, global governance and international organizations.

Branded!

Branded!
Author: Michael E. Conroy
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2007-06-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1550923544

Making responsible social and environmental choices has not always been a first priority for many corporations, but recent history has changed all that. Small but mighty NGOs, using 21st Century global communications, are nipping at the heels of corporations caught in unethical and irresponsible practices. NGO "market campaigns" are moving these companies toward the higher standard now demanded by their clients, their consumers, and society as a whole. The lever that moves these giants is the risk of destroying their carefully built "brands" if they fail to recognize their "moral liability" and clean up their practices. Branded! outlines the ability of NGOs to affect corporate markets. It shows how the development of certification systems for corporate social and environmental practices has created some intriguing questions: Why are retail giants paying premiums for ethically-produced products and not overcharging their customers? How have NGOs gained such power and credibility? What are the challenges of these new modes of corporate accountability for both NGOs and corporations? What are the unexpected opportunities for newly accountable corporations? Branded! is a "must-read" book for corporate executives, NGOs and concerned consumers. It is rich with vignettes of firms, NGOs, campaigns, failures, successes, memorable personalities and hard-fought battles.

Counter-Cola

Counter-Cola
Author: Amanda Ciafone
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2019-05-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520970942

Counter-Cola charts the history of one of the world’s most influential and widely known corporations, The Coca-Cola Company. Over the past 130 years, the corporation has sought to make its products, brands, and business central to daily life in over 200 countries. Amanda Ciafone uses this example of global capitalism to reveal the pursuit of corporate power within the key economic transformations—liberal, developmentalist, neoliberal—of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Coca-Cola's success has not gone uncontested. People throughout the world have redeployed the corporation, its commodities, and brand images to challenge the injustices of daily life under capitalism. As Ciafone shows, assertions of national economic interests, critiques of cultural homogenization, fights for workers’ rights, movements for environmental justice, and debates over public health have obliged the corporation to justify itself in terms of the common good, demonstrating capitalism’s imperative to either assimilate critiques or reveal its limits.

The Corporation That Changed the World

The Corporation That Changed the World
Author: Nick Robins
Publisher: Pluto Press
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2012-10-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780745331966

The English East India Company was the mother of the modern multinational. Its trading empire encircled the globe, importing Asian luxuries such as spices, textiles, and teas. But it also conquered much of India with its private army and broke open China's markets with opium. The Company's practices shocked its contemporaries and still reverberate today. The Corporation That Changed the World is the first book to reveal the Company's enduring legacy as a corporation. This expanded edition explores how the four forces of scale, technology, finance, and regulation drove its spectacular rise and fall. For decades, the Company was simply too big to fail, and stock market bubbles, famines, drug-running, and even duels between rival executives are to be found in this new account. For Robins, the Company's story provides vital lessons on both the role of corporations in world history and the steps required to make global business accountable today.

Global Inc

Global Inc
Author: Medard Gabel
Publisher:
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2003
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781565847279

"In the future there will be two kinds of corporations; those that go global, and those that go bankrupt."C. Michael Armstrong, CEO, AT&T Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 53 are corporations. A handful of corporate giants control most of the world's energy, technology, food, banks, industry, and media. Yet despite the ubiquity of enormous multinationals and their tremendous economic, social, political, and environmental presence in the world, the history and character of corporate entities remains largely unknown, daunting, and inaccessible to the general public. Global, Inc. is an atlas that charts this new, multinational geography. It features an extraordinary series of specially commissioned full-color maps that make clear the tremendous and surprising reach of individual corporations such as General Motors, Toyota, IBM, AT&T, Microsoft, British Petroleum, and AOL Time Warner, as they have spread out across the globe. Colorful explanatory charts and graphs help illustrate, among other phenomena, the meteoric rise of today's MNCs: from the opening up of ancient trade routes and the early colonization companies of the 17th through 19th centuries, to the international trade flows and cross-border mergers and acquisitions of today's modern multinationals. The product of several years of collaborative research by leading historians and geographers, Global, Inc. is the first book to examine multinational corporations from a truly global perspective and in atlas format. Impartial, accessible, and endlessly engrossing, Global, Inc. offers a penetrating look at one of the most powerful phenomena on the planet in the twenty-first century.