Major Multinational Corporations Research Articles

Network Security Governance Policy and Risk Management: Research on Challenges and Coping Strategies

Cybersecurity is a big issue for major multinational corporations in today's lightning-fast digital world. Risk management and Network Security Governance (NSG) are complex, and this paper discusses the challenges and strategies needed to protect digital assets in a more vulnerable cyber environment. Cyber threats are constantly changing, technological integration is complex, and regulatory compliance is severe, all of which make it more challenging to maintain robust network security. NSG requires strong security rules and standards, which this conversation must address. The ever-changing threat environment demands that these regulations be open, accurate, and flexible. Risk management identifying, assessing, and mitigating threats—is essential to regulatory compliance and organizational reputation, according to the article. Risk mitigation methods like proactive, investigative, and remedial approaches are examined, along with cybersecurity advancements like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). In solving network security issues, the text emphasizes continuous learning, collaboration, and information sharing. Network Security Governance and Risk Management (NSGRM) is complex and dynamic, and this study covers its challenges and strategies.

Investigating factors that impact employee turnover in the medical device industry in the United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has established itself as the medical device industry's preferred regional center. Major multinational corporations either have a regional subsidiary or are planning to open up a principal office in the UAE to expand their business. Employees in the industry are in high demand as new opportunities open up frequently and that causes challenges to companies, namely employee turnover. This research helps bridge the gap found in the literature by investigating the factors that impact employee turnover in the medical device industry in the UAE. These factors were tested with their subsequent sub-factors. Using a quantitative approach, the study surveyed 230 participants from 47 medical device companies in the UAE. The result of one-way ANOVA demonstrated a significant relationship between employee salary and employee turnover. The linear regression analysis revealed that employee turnover had a statistically significant relationship with perceived external prestige, location, flextime, organizational justice, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, extrinsic rewards, career advancement, lack of alternatives, and constituent attachments. These findings indicate the need for a strategy utilizing these factors for existing and new medical device companies in the UAE to prevent high employee turnover or limit it at least.

Development Status and Economic Effects of India's Service Outsourcing

Major multinational corporations can boost their core competitiveness, streamline the supply chain, and cut expenses by outsourcing services. India has been leading the development of the global service outsourcing business under the trend of service globalization, and its service outsourcing industry has also developed some very clear tendencies and characteristics. This paper analyzes and studies the current economic effects of India's service outsourcing industry, which is conducive to a better understanding of the current situation and prospects of India's service outsourcing. It is based on the analysis of the long-standing driving factors and unfavorable factors in the development of India's service outsourcing industry.

On entrepreneurial resilience among micro‐entrepreneurs in the face of economic disruptions… A little help from friends

AbstractWhile much has been written about resilience in the supply chain management (SCM) literature, most investigations focus on large corporations from the perspective of helping them bounce back after disruptions. There has been little investigation on resilience among the weakest and smallest members of the global supply chain—that is, small entrepreneurs at the bottom of the pyramid (BOP). This is despite the fact that these micro‐entrepreneurs are often key cogs in the last‐mile supply chain efforts of major multinational corporations. They experience disruptions at a higher rate than major corporations, have fewer formal mechanisms in place to recover from them, and are often unable to "bounce back" in the traditional sense. In the current study, we address this gap by investigating multiple types of disruptions (i.e., idiosyncratic and covariate) and how they impact entrepreneurial resilience among microbusinesses in an emerging economy. In addition, we look at the buffering impact of various actors (i.e., financial and social) on entrepreneurship in the face of these disruptions. We highlight the important role that these entrepreneurs play in the BOP supply chain and provide suggestions that can assist with improving their resilience and the resilience of the BOP supply chain.

Mother Company's Responsibility for Multinational Subsidiary Activities

The objective of the article is to analyze the various forms of responsibility of parent companies and their subsidiary multinationals in terms of what corporate social responsibility means. At the methodological level it is analytical and descriptive research. Despite all the struggles and activities carried out to regulate the operations of multinational corporations and the demand of the agents of the main governments responsible for strictly monitoring compliance with the rules (corporate social responsibility) the fact that major multinational corporations are pursuing interests for the implementation oflos control and monitoring of the cross-border activities of their companies should not be ignored. It is concludedthat the government's support for foreign investment, for example, is sometimes subject to compliance with minimum social, environmental, and human rights standards. It is difficult to judge the success and outcome of the effort made to monitor and regulate the business of multinational corporations, but what seems certain is that rich countries, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, have apparently accepted the task of playing a significant role in promoting and promoting cross-border (corporate social responsibility).

Tax Strategies Employed by Overseas American Individuals and SMEs

A study of the tax behavior of overseas Americans, both individuals and small firms is proposed. The researcher aims to discover and model behavior, through text analysis of data collected from a wide range of sources using interviews, surveys, blog and forum postings, published reports as well as personal communications, to demonstrate and inform using the pattern matching method initially proposed by Trochim (1989). Text mining and modeling techniques, using unsupervised machine learning facilitate large-scale analysis, and have been widely deployed in a range of language-based studies, driven by human-machine interaction. Major multinational corporations are excluded, and the study focuses on individuals and the smaller-scale juristic persons such as small and medium enterprises (SME). Behavioral approaches to taxation will motivate a better understanding of the phenomenon tax avoidance and tax evasion, once quantitative modeled. Overseas Americans are taxable, no matter where they reside globally, on the basis of having American citizenship. Non-citizens with a USA connection may also be subject to US taxes. The range of US taxable entities operating overseas include corporations, individuals, estates and trusts, and many of the small businesses filing as flow-through entities under the individual code, namely S-corporations, sole proprietorships, and partnerships, will be included in the study. There are an estimated 9 million taxable overseas Americans corporations and business entities. The Congressional Research Service (Gravelle, 2015), reported that as many as 100 billion U.S. dollars may go uncollected, due to tax evasion and a similar tax shortfall figure of 100 billion dollars is due to tax avoidance. Avoidance tends to be attributed to U.S. origin, multinational corporations and evasion by the smaller entities. The tax collection is exacerbated by changes to the 2018 tax code, which encourages compliance through tax cuts to a fixed 21% rate for the corporate sector, and reduced taxes for individual , opening up new avenues for aggressive tax avoidance strategies. A gap in the literature is the uncertainty regarding changing of the U.S. tax code in 2018 and how it will affect overseas American tax entities.

Çok Uluslu Şirketlerin Kontrolünde Ulusal Hükümetlerin İsteksizliği Üzerine Kısa Bir Değerlendirme

Corporations have been named as the key economic actors in the globalised world. Most countries find themselves dominated by major multinational corporations. Even though corporations create many positive outcomes for national economies, they possess a myriad of negative impact on people, especially on employees. Yet, it is not easy to reduce this negative impact via traditional/national regulatory strategies since many such corporations carry out their operations, either directly, or indirectly, through their subsidiaries, doing so across several countries, whilst others conduct their operations in the midst of complex supply chains that are located beyond national borders. This situation makes corporations transnational actors that may not be curbed by any single domestic regulation. However, why do not individual states regulate such companies sufficiently in their own country through the patchwork of domestic regulations? The following paper shall briefly examine why national governments are reluctant to play an active role in terms of corporate regulation.

Smart innovative cities: The impact of Smart City policies on urban innovation

Smart City policies have attracted relevant attention and funding over the last few years. While the time seems now ripe to conclude that such policies have a positive impact on urban economic growth, the picture is much less clear when looking at the microfoundations of this effect.In this paper we look at the urban innovation impact of Smart City policies. In fact, typical Smart City projects imply the involvement not only of major multinational corporations, along with local public authorities, but also of local companies, typically with the aim to translate general technological solutions to the local needs.A new data set collected for these analyses comprises data on Smart City features for 309 European metropolitan areas, Smart City policy intensity, and urban innovation outputs. The latter are proxied by calculating total patent applications to the European Patent Office between 2008 and 2013. Patent counts also include technologically narrower classes, namely high-tech, ICT, and specific Smart City technologies patent applications.Propensity Score Matching estimates suggest that cities engaging in Smart City policies above the EU average also tend to patent more intensively. This effect is stronger for high-tech patents, while decreases for more narrowly defined technological classes. This last result suggests possible technological spillovers from technologies directly involved in Smart City policies.

LA ECONOMÍA POLÍTICA DEL ARBITRAJE LABORAL GLOBAL

This paper analyzes the fundamental role of wage differences in the efforts undertaken by major multinational corporations to restructure their productive, trade, financial, and service strategies under the aegis of neoliberal globalization. I am especially interested in underscoring the way in which these disparities, by means of geographic relocation and the redistribution of productive processes, have become an easily accessible and apparently inexhaustible source of extraordinary earnings. This situation has given rise to the entrenchment of unequal development between central and peripheral countries and a new international division of labor characterized by the direct and indirect exportation of the most valuable commodity for capital: the labor force.

2013 Annual Global Tax Competitiveness Ranking: Corporate Tax Policy at a Glance

Canada is losing its appeal as a destination for business investment. Its ability to compete against other countries for investment slipped considerably this year in our global tax competitiveness ranking, down six spots among OECD countries, and down 11 spots among the 90 countries. While many governments around the world responded to the fallout of the global recession by significantly reducing corporate tax rates, certain policy moves in Canada have us headed in the opposite direction. Canada is in danger of repelling business investment, which can only worsen current economic and fiscal challenges.Canada’s fading advantage is the result of recent anti-competitive provincial tax policies that increased the cost of investment. This includes, most notably, British Columbia’s decision to reverse the harmonization of its provincial sales tax with the federal GST, as well as recent corporate income tax rate hikes in B.C. and New Brunswick.When economic calamity strikes, and workers and their families feel the pain of lost jobs and lost wealth, politicians know they can score populist points by targeting the corporate sector. After all, corporations do not vote and they do not have a human face. News stories about major multinational corporations using tax-avoidance techniques to minimize their tax bills, only feed the populism, leaving voters believing that companies are getting away without paying a “fair share” of taxes. But when the corporate sector is targeted, it is not only supposedly wealthy capitalists who pay, but also employees, through lost wages and jobs, and working-class people who have a stake in companies through pension plans and mutual funds. On a larger scale, it is the economy that suffers. The same profit-maximizing imperative that leads companies to seek ways to reduce their tax liabilities also motivates firms to redirect investment to competing, lower-tax jurisdictions. Populist policies aimed at squeezing businesses may win votes in the short term, but they come at significant costs.Yet, there are politicians calling for still higher taxes on corporations. The federal Opposition leader, Thomas Mulcair, of the New Democratic Party, wants to raise the federal corporate income tax rate from 15 to 22 per cent, making Canada’s combined federal-provincial tax rate (over 33 per cent) one of the highest in the world. Such proposals promise an easy source of new revenue at no cost to individual taxpayers. In reality, the cost to taxpayers is lost competitiveness, resulting in a shrinking corporate tax base that will only leave Canadians with a weaker economy, profit-shifting to other countries leading to little additional revenue available to Canadian governments and, inevitably, a larger tax burden to bear individually.The right direction for Canada is the other way: improving tax competitiveness and enhancing tax neutrality by broadening the corporate tax base to further fund rate reduction. The harmonization of provincial sales taxes with the federal GST, in those provinces that have yet to do so, would substantially improve Canada’s tax competitiveness, as would the elimination of economically inefficient tax breaks for favoured business activities. And Canadian governments should continue to lower corporate taxes across the board, whenever possible. Canada’s edge as a globally competitive investment destination has been hard won over many years. It would be a pity to now see it squandered by reckless populist politics.

India's Grand Advocates: A Legal Elite Flourishing in the Era of Globalization

An observer of the legal scene in contemporary India quickly becomes aware of the presence of a stratum of legal superstars — advocates based at the Supreme Court and some of the High Courts who are very much in demand and widely known. These 'Grand Advocates,' as we call them, are the most visible and renowned legal professionals in present day India. Stories abound of their strategic acumen, their preternatural articulateness (speaking for hours and days without notes), their esoteric quirks and outsized incomes, and their contributions to the 'rule of law.' This elite handful of lawyers is involved in almost every high-profile case in what is one of the most active and powerful higher judiciaries in the world. Their clients include India’s new uber-rich, major multinational corporations, and the country’s political class.We argue that Grand Advocates (GAs) have not only survived, but flourished in the age of globalization — benefiting from, while resisting absorption by, the rising law firm sector. A series of structural features of litigation and the judiciary in India have played a dominating role in perpetuating this unique set of lawyers, and the culture they inhabit. Litigation in India tends to be less about money (as there are fewer deep pockets, judges rarely grant large monetary compensation, and it is difficult to collect an award), and more about control. Given the backlogged courts, cases may drag on for years and so it is necessary to secure beneficial interim orders as they relate to the ownership of property, command over an organization, or the validity of government regulation. To achieve these ends, Grand Advocates use the extensive human capital they have developed within the court system and their nuanced knowledge of both formal and informal judicial procedure. These assets are in many ways positional goods — particularly their reputational capital before certain judges–that are difficult to share with juniors or partners. They are also assets that can be used in a wide range of cases, thus lessening the pressure to specialize amongst this select group of lawyers, who are still largely generalists.

Changing Dynamics of Foreign Direct Investment in China’s Automotive Industry

China’s automotive industry has developed dramatically in recent years as more and more major multinational corporations (MNCs) in this industry began to invest in China. Most of these investments have developed in the form of joint-ventures with Chinese state owned enterprises (SOEs). This paper contributes to the current literature by studying the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the productivity of the automotive industry in China using panel data during the 1999 –2008 period. Channels through which FDI may directly and indirectly affect the productivity are investigated using pooled ordinary least squares model (POLS) and fixed effects model (FES) to estimate the influence of FDI on productivity in the automotive industry. The results suggest that FDI plays a negative role in this industry and suggests that there is a need for Chinese government to modify its policies and practices in order to improve the productivity of such a key industry in the Chinese economy.

Protracted Lawfare: The Tale of Chevron Texaco in the Amazon

The Texaco oil company has long been accused of creating an environmental and human rights catastrophe while conducting oil operations in the Ecuadorian Amazon over a number of decades to 1990. Plaintiffs from the area, largely Indigenous people, have sought compensation via litigation for nearly twenty years, first against Texaco, then against the merged successor company ChevronTexaco (now known as ‘Chevron’). This article tells the tale (so far) of that litigation, which has wound its way from the United States to Ecuador and back again. The plaintiffs won an US18 billion dollar judgment in Ecuador in early 2011, though an appeal is pending. Furthermore, related litigation remains ongoing in the US as well as in the Hague in the Netherlands. This story of protracted and ongoing ‘lawfare’ reveals just how difficult it can be to hold major multinational corporations accountable for environmental and human rights harms when those harms have taken place in a weak developing State in a virtual regulatory vacuum.

Corporate Governance: Auditor Independence in Uganda

The 1990’s and early 2000’s saw the shocking collapse of several major multinational corporations. Since then, the debate of the importance of good corporate governance practices has taken centre stage. Of particular interest has been the independence of external auditors as they verify a company’s financial information. A great deal of research has been carried out on auditor independence especially in Europe, Asia and the Americas. There has however been very little research carried out on the subject in Africa. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the auditor independence framework in Uganda. It will be shown that although some headway has been made towards ensuring auditor independence, there is still a long way to go. The regulations and oversight of the audit function are not sufficient enough to ensure a conducive framework for auditor independence.

Protracted lawfare: the tale of Chevron Texaco in the Amazon

The Texaco oil company has long been accused of creating an environmental and human rights catastrophe while conducting oil operations in the Ecuadorian Amazon over a number of decades to 1990. Plaintiffs from the area, largely Indigenous people, have sought compensation via litigation for nearly twenty years, first against Texaco, then against the merged successor company ChevronTexaco (now known as ‘Chevron’). This article tells the tale (so far) of that litigation, which has wound its way from the United States to Ecuador and back again. The plaintiffs won a US$18 billion judgment in Ecuador in early 2011, though an appeal is pending. Furthermore, related litigation remains ongoing in the US as well as in the Hague in the Netherlands. This story of protracted and ongoing ‘lawfare’ reveals just how difficult it can be to hold major multinational corporations accountable for environmental and human rights harms when those harms have taken place in a weak developing State in a virtual regulatory vacuum.

Choice Of Functional Currency Under SFAS No. 52

The purpose of this study is to determine the importance of various factors in the choice of the functional currency used by 400 major multinational corporations Selection of functional currency is a key feature of SFAS No. 52 because it determines the method used to translate foreign currency financial statements into U.S. dollars and the extent to which changes in exchange rates affect consolidated operating results. The results reveal that cash flows and sales market were the two most important factors, while financing and intercompany transactions were the least important criteria in selecting the functional currency.

Global Marketing Communications and Strategic Regionalism

This article examines how ideas of global standardization, localization, and regionalization are played out in relation to global marketing. Its aim is to deepen present understanding of global marketing communications and corporate strategy through case studies examining corporate responses to the issues of global standardization, localization, and regionalization. To do this, a research project was developed: an exploratory analysis of the advertising trade-press literature over a ten year period (1997–2007) mapping how three major multinational corporations (MNCs)—Coca-Cola, McDonald's, and Colgate-Palmolive—engage with marketing from the global, to the local, and the regional. From this exploratory analysis, two key developments emerge. The first is that, despite individual variations in each corporation's response to global marketing, in broad terms the dominant global marketing approach is one of ‘glocalization’. The second key development and key argument of this paper is that, while the reemergence of ‘regionalization’ in analyses of global marketing and corporate strategy is becoming more prevalent, the term as presently understood requires significant conceptual revision. Thus we propose and develop the concept of ‘strategic regionalism’ as a valuable umbrella term for capturing some of the nuances of regionalization as it pertains to and is practiced within global marketing communications and corporate strategy. Este artículo examina cómo las ideas de localización, regionalización y estandarización global se han desarrollado en relación al mercadeo global. Su objetivo es profundizar el conocimiento actual sobre las comunicaciones del mercadeo global y la estrategia corporativa a través de estudios de caso, para analizar las respuestas corporativas a temas como la regionalización, localización y estandarización global. Para lograrlo, se desarrolló un proyecto de investigación: un análisis preliminar de la literatura de prensa especializada en publicidad durante un periodo de diez años (1997-2007). Se realizó un mapeo de cómo las tres principales corporaciones multinacionales (MNCs)—Coca-Cola, McDonald's, y Colgate-Palmolive—abordan el mercadeo a partir de lo global, a lo local y por último lo regional. De este análisis preliminar, surgieron dos resultados fundamentales. El primero consiste en que, a pesar de las diferencias en la respuesta de cada corporación al mercadeo global, en términos generales, el enfoque predominante del mercadeo global fue el de “glocalización”. El segundo resultado y argumento fundamental del artículo consiste en que, mientras el resurgimiento del término de ‘regionalización’ predomina en el análisis de mercadeo global y de estrategia corporativa, dicho término requiere una revisión conceptual. Por lo tanto, proponemos desarrollar el concepto de ‘regionalismo estratégico’, como un término genérico que reúna los diferentes matices de regionalización pertinentes, que se utilizan en las comunicaciones de mercadeo global y estrategia corporativa. 本文探讨全球标准化、本土化和区域化等概念相对于全球营销现象是如何过时了。通过案例研究，本文考察了公司是如何应对全球标准化、本土化和区域化等问题的，其目的是要深化对全球营销传播和公司战略的现有理解。为此，我们进行了一项研究：深入分析十年内（1997–2007）三大跨国公司（MNCs）即可口可乐、麦当劳和高露洁的广告宣传文献，勾画它们如何进行从全球到地方到区域各个层次的营销活动。 从这一分析来看，有两个重要发展。首先是，尽管各公司的全球营销战略存在个体间差异，广义地讲，主导性的战略还是“全球本土化”。第二个重要发展也是本文的主要观点是，虽然在分析全球营销和公司战略的过程中，再度出现“区域化”越来越普遍，但目前所理解的“区域化”在概念上需要进行重大修正。因此，我们提出和发展了“战略区域主义”这一有用的包容性概念，以抓住区域化在涉及和运用于全球营销传播和公司战略时的一些细微差别。

Multinational Oil Companies and the Adoption of Sustainable Development: A Resource-Based and Institutional Theory Interpretation of Adoption Heterogeneity

Sustainable development is often framed as a social issue to which corporations should pay attention because it offers both opportunities and challenges. Through the use of institutional theory and the resource-based view of the firm, we shed some light on why, more than 20 years after sustainable development was first introduced, we see neither the adoption of this business model as dominant nor its converse, that is the total abandonment of the model as unworkable and unprofitable. We focus on multinational corporations (MNCs) because they were among the organizations first called to take action. In order to illustrate the institutional pressures MNCs face and their strategic response to these pressures, we analysed four major oil and gas multinationals subject to similar sustainable development pressures – climate change, biodiversity, renewable energy development and social investment. We argue that normative and coercive isomorphism does not occur at the global level because sustainable development is largely a stakeholder-driven rather than a broad social pressure. That is, host country interpretation of sustainable development pressures varies across an MNC’s subsidiary network. Based on the analysis of the four major MNCs’ annual reports from 2000 to 2005, we argue that mimetic isomorphism may occur, but since it implies the use of complex and intangible resources, mimetic processes are slow, rare and discretionary.

The Spirit of Global Belonging: Perspectives from Some Humanity-Oriented Icons

Many forces are making the world increasingly smaller and a movement for global citizenship is underway. Better technology and transportation now facilitating greater mobility among people; borders for ideas, in particular, are virtually disappearing. Many national and international organizations acknowledging this are reinventing themselves to not only benefit from it, but also serve as catalysts. Major multinational corporations are embracing global citizenship. Leading institutions of higher learning in many developed countries are integrating the notion into their curriculums. Although global citizenship is still a loosely defined term legally, politically and institutionally, there are efforts - academic and otherwise, to scope out its notion. Of course, before the movement for global citizenship gathers momentum, the spirit of global-belonging (aka belonging to the world) ought to be widely embraced. In this brief essay, we explore the need for the spirit by reviewing the ideas of several icons of twentieth century: Einstein, a name most known to science, Martin Luther King, Jr., world renowned for the struggle against racism, Mohandas Gandhi, a well known spiritual and political leader from India, and Kazi Nazrul, a name little known beyond his region and language.

ICT4D and the Siyakhula Living Lab: an anthropological contribution to digital development

Anthropologists are increasingly interested in the reception and adaptation of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) at the local level, especially when these are intended or adapted for social change in the kinds of societies and communities anthropologists study. The process has been increasingly driven by the spread of landline telephones, radio, television, personal computers, the Internet (1.0 and now 2.0), basic cell phones and now internet-enabled or ‘3G’ cell phones. These successive technological innovations, now collectively grouped as ICTs, have had the effect of shrinking distance by increasing the reach of both those who control these technologies and those who can access them. With radio and TV, and even the Internet until recently, communication tended to be one-way: from the centre to the periphery both between and within countries. This was never the case with landline telephones, which offered two-way communication from the outset; but landlines rarely extended into the rural areas of developing countries, and even where there was access, the poor generally could not afford domestic installation. Cellular phones, though even more expensive in terms of call charges, operate beyond the reach of landlines, are portable and no longer as dependent on frequent charging from mains electricity as before. The wireless networks that run them now offer access to the Internet almost everywhere—for those who have 3G handsets and/or wireless-connected computers—and include such useful adaptations to Third World conditions such as ‘pay as you go’ and ‘please call me.’ Moreover, the Internet itself has become more interactive with its 2.0 technologies. If ‘development’ (as opposed to modernisation) is about agency and empowerment for those who currently lack it, then there is development potential in the newest ICTs despite their control by major multinational corporations. Informatics professionals and elements of the ‘development community’ reaching as high as the World Bank and the United Nations (Millennium Development Goals) regard ICT4D (ICTs for development) as a potential redeemer of half a century of mostly failed interventions on behalf of the world's poor. But how feasible is ICT4D? How is it being received and what are its direct and indirect impacts? This paper is the outcome of four years of engagement with an ICT4D research project founded in Dwesa-Cwebe on the Wild Coast of the Eastern Cape in South Africa. It assesses not only the potential and snags of ICT as a development tool, but also, via a baseline research project completed in 2008, provides a sense of the setting, the needs of the community and the potential of the ‘Living Lab’ approach to ICT4D.