Micropolitics in the Multinational Corporation

Reviews / Votes

'While James March analyzed the business firm as a political coalition in his classic 1962 paper, his seminal insights were neglected until relatively recently. Nowhere is this neglect more apparent than in international business, where from the early work of Hymer through a series of influential contributions like those of Kogut and Zander, the multinational enterprise has long been viewed as a cohesive social unit, rather than a factionalized political network. Therefore I welcome the efforts of Becker-Ritterspach, Blazejewski, Doerrenbaecher and Geppert to 'bring politics back in'. In their new book, the authors provide valuable new insights into the micropolitics of the business firm. This scholarly volume opens up new avenues for future research.' Ram Mudambi, Fox School of Business and Management, Temple University, Philadelphia 'Power, politics and conflict are ever-present in multinational corporations, but most mainstream academic literature acknowledges them only on the margin. This book, for the first time, brings together and synthesises the different ways of thinking about power, politics and conflict inside multinationals. It is a hugely impressive book in terms of the scope and depth of its analysis. It will be a highly valued resource for academics and students working in this area.' Julian Birkinshaw, London Business School 'Until very recently the multinational corporation was seen as a unitary actor, cultivating the highest form of economic rationality ... A series of empirically oriented studies gradually emerged that undermined [this] view ... Instead, an image of political games and rivalling powers emerged, question[ing] the ease with which MNCs could establish [successful] collaborative relations ... a huge literature based on diversified theoretical perspectives has [since] emerged that sees the MNC as a setting for micro-politics. The great contribution of this volume is that it provides us with an excellent and highly systematised overview of this new burgeoning literature [from the perspective of] a number of different theoretical traditions, [enabling] the authors to suggest a number of new routes for research. Organization studies [is] in [great] need of ... analytical skills for ... suggesting improvements in the operations and governance of MNCs, which play an overwhelming role [in] ... our economic futures. This volume is an important step in this direction.' Peer Hull Kristensen, Copenhagen Business School