Multinational Corporations and Organization Theory

Christoph Dörrenbächer is Professor of Organizational Design and Behaviour in International Business at the Berlin School of Economics and Law (Department of Business and Economics), Berlin, Germany. Previously he worked as a consultant and research fellow at various organizations in Germany and abroad, including the Social Science Research Centre, Berlin and the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Visiting appointments were with the United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations (New York), Central European University (Budapest) and Manchester Metropolitan University. He holds a PhD from the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Free University, Berlin. His current research focus is on management, labour relations and headquarters - subsidiary relationships in multinational corporations. He has published widely in renowned international academic journals including British Journal of Management, International Business Review, International Journal of Management Reviews, Journal of World Business, Management International Review, Organization Studies and Journal of International Management. He currently serves as a co-editor-in-chief of Critical Perspectives on International Business and he is the founding director of the Berlin Institute for International Business Studies (BIIBS). Mike Geppert is Professor of Strategic and International Management at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, and Visiting Professor at the Turku School of Economics. Other recent visiting appointments were with the University of Technology, Sydney, Stanford University and the University of Regensburg. Mike holds a PhD from the Humboldt University in Berlin. His current research focus is on socio-political issues and sensemaking within multinational companies, and on cross-national comparisons of management and employment relations in various industrial sectors. He has published in highly recognized academic journals including British Journal of Management, European Journal of Industrial Relations, Human Relations, International Journal of Human Resource Management, International Journal of Management Reviews, Journal of International Management, Journal of Management Studies, Management International Review and Organization Studies. Mike served as Vice-chair of EGOS until 2016 and is co-organizer of the EGOS Standing Working Group on “Multinational corporations: social agency and institutional change.”

Business and economics scholars from Europe, Australia, Israel and North America offer 15 essays on how insights from organization theory and international business can broaden understanding of multinational corporations. They describe the historical perspective on the relationship between multinational corporations and organization theory; established applications of organization theory in their study, such as a contingency approach to the role of headquarters, institutionalist theory, and ethnographic studies; new concepts and methodologies, including multinational corporations as multi-lingual corporations, headquarters-subsidiary relations, critical realism, convention theory, and a “playing field of power”; and internal and external contestations of multinational corporations, including the role of gender, the role of social movements and political contests, ethics, and the adoption of corporate social responsibility.

• PrefacePART I: SETTING THE SCENEMultinational Corporations and Organization Theory: AN Introduction to Post-Millennium Perspectives - Christoph Dörrenbächer and Mike GeppertThe East India Company: The First Modern Multinationals? - Stewart Clegg PART II: FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF ESTABLISHED DEBATESThe Role of the Headquarters in the Contemporary MNC: A Contingency Model - William G. Egelhoff and Joachim WolfBetween Local Mooring and Global Orientation: A Neo-Institutional Theory Perspective on the Contemporary Multinational Corporation - Peter Walgenbach, Gili S. Drori and Markus A. HöllererWhat the Shared Industry and Country of Origin Bring: Analogous Sequences in the Internationalization of Finnish Paper MNCs - Juha LaurilaAltered States of Consciousness: MNCs and Ethnographic Studies - Fiona MoorePART III: NEW CONCEPTUAL AND METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES IN THE STUDY OF THE MNCLanguage as a Meeting Ground for Research on the MNC and Organization Theory - Rebecca Piekkari and D. Eleanor WestneyHeadquarter-Subsidiary Relations in the Multinational Corporation as a Discursive Struggle - Alexei Koveshnikov, Mats Ehrnrooth and Eero VaaraApplying Critical Realism to the MNC: Exploring New Realities in Staffing and Expatriation - Chris Rees and Chris SmithHeadquarters-Subsidiary Relationships from a Convention Theory Perspective: Plural Orders of Worth, Arrangements and Form-Giving Activites - Julia Brandl and Anna SchneiderThe Multinational Corporation as a Playing Field of Power: A Bourdieusian Approach - Giuseppe Delmestri and Mara Brumana PART IV: THE CONTEMPORARY MNC: AN INTERNALLY AND EXTERNALLY POLITICIZED ORGANIZATIONGendering the MNC - Michal FrenkelMNCs and Politicization from Outside - Sabrina Zajak The Dark Side of MNCs - George Cairns and Sharif As-SaberPrivate Governance as Regulatory Substitute or Complement? A Comparative Institutional Approach to CSR Adoption by Multinational Corporations - Gregory Jackson and Nikolas Rathert