Social Capital and Multinationals

Ian W. Jones, Michael Pollitt and David Bek
Additional contact information
Ian W. Jones: University of Oxford
David Bek: University of Cambridge

Chapter 4 in Multinationals in their Communities, 2007, pp 90-128 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract We live in world of rising concern about the contribution of multinationals to society. Naomi Klein’s (2000) No Logo and Noreena Hertz’s (2001) The Silent Takeover have raised the spectre of global corporations who show little concern for their effect on vulnerable host communities and who are more powerful than many of the governments that welcome them across their borders. As such multinationals are often perceived to be in the process of destroying local cultures and replacing them with homogenised western values. Multinational production methods are accused of exploiting desperate workers and having low labour and environmental standards. The process of globalisation which multinationals represent is credited with undermining the power of national governments to control their economic destiny, leaving them vulnerable to the subsequent exit of footloose capital and undermining their tax base, by promoting tax competition among governments to attract them in the first place. Even more moderate writers such as Stopford, Strange and Henley (1991) recognise that a world with increasingly significant large global firms poses a fundamental challenge for developing country governments: change national economic policies (good or bad) or lose multinational investments.

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility; Social Capital; Corporate Citizenship; Structural Hole; Trust Game (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-230-21105-6_4

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230211056

DOI: 10.1057/9780230211056_4

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().