Out-of-body experiences: migrating firms and altered states

Abstract

Boundaries between major actors in the international system are less like lines in the sand than like frontiers encompassing broad areas of geographic and metaphoric overlap. Boundary locations are relative, variable and often contested, reflecting the contingency of claims by representatives of states and other corporate entities, in this case multinational firms, regarding the appropriate reach of each body's interests and the legal and practical limits to each one's authority. These propositions are tested by examining the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, a multinational firm composed of multiple domestic and foreign affiliates, during the period of the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. Joint interests attenuated formal boundaries separating Kuwait from countries hosting its direct foreign investments, and served as primary motivations for external intervention. Boundary transgressions are effected by persons with multiple identities and roles who occupy positions of authority, not only in that these persons command strategic and economic resources, but also insofar as they are skilled manipulators of symbolic tokens of identity and expertise.