The Social Responsibility of Multinationals: From an Afterthought to Center Stage

Lorraine Eden ()

A chapter in Rethinking Business Responsibility in a Global Context, 2020, pp 1-18 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract How has the social responsibility of multinationals (MNEs) changed over the past 50 years? This chapter provides a brief historical tour of MNEs and social issues from the late 1960s to the present. I argue that from the late 1960s forward, scholars in economics and international business (IB) focused on the economic impacts of foreign direct investment (FDI) with some concern for political impacts; whereas international political economy (IPE) scholars paid more attention to political and social issues. It has only been in the past 15 years that the social responsibility of MNEs moved from an afterthought to a mainstream subject of inquiry for most MNE scholars. My arguments are documented through a review of key books and writings together with a personal history of my own research. I then review Schlegelmilch and Szőcs (2020) and argue that the book moves the social responsibility of MNEs literature forward in several ways.

Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:csrchp:978-3-030-34261-6_1

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-34261-6_1

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