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Three lenses on the multinational enterprise: politics, corruption, and corporate social responsibility

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Abstract

Scholars who analyze multinational enterprises (MNEs) recognize the complex relationship between international business (IB) and society. However, compared with other IB topics, research on politics, corruption and corporate social responsibility – ‘three lenses’ on the MNE – remains somewhat embryonic, with unresolved issues regarding frameworks, measurement, methods, and theory. This presents unique opportunities for integration and extension of disciplinary perspectives, which we explore in this article. We provide an introduction to potential linkages across these three lenses, an agenda for additional theoretical and empirical research, and a review of the papers in the JIBS Focused Issue.

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Notes

  1. Three of the examples that begin Boddewyn (1988) include corruption (aerospace company bribing officials), politics (steel industry coalition to lobby for protection) and CSR (promoting ‘Buy American’).

  2. The eight questions are: (1) What is corruption? (2) Which countries are the most corrupt? (3) What are the characteristics of countries with high corruption? (4) What is the magnitude of corruption? (5) Do higher wages for bureaucrats reduce corruption? (6) Can competition reduce corruption? (7) Why have there been so few (recent) successful attempts to fight corruption? (8) Does corruption adversely affect growth?

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Acknowledgements

We thank all the participants in the JIBS January 2006 ‘Three Lenses on the MNE’ Focused Issue Workshop, especially the workshop rapporteurs (Jean Boddewyn and John Dunning) and the workshop discussants (Robert Grosse, Mansour Javidan, Abagail McWilliams, Luiz Mezquita, Gary Anders, and Martin Meznar), for their insightful comments and suggestions. We also deeply appreciate editorial support from Danielle Trojan and the sage advice of Arie Lewin. The helpful comments on our introductory paper by three anonymous reviewers are also gratefully acknowledged. Financial support for the workshop was provided by the School of Global Management and Leadership at Arizona State University, the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Center for Financial Technology of the Lally School of Management and Technology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia, and the CIBER at Thunderbird, The Garvin School of International Management, and is gratefully acknowledged. Special thanks go to Joan Jankowski of the School of Global Management and Leadership at Arizona State University for coordinating the workshop. Lastly, we thank all the individuals who reviewed manuscripts for the special issue. A list of their names is provided at the end of this Focused Issue Section.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA

    Peter Rodriguez

  2. Department of Management and Marketing, A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management, University of California at Riverside, Riverside, CA, USA

    Donald S Siegel

  3. Department of Management, W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Amy Hillman

  4. Department of Management, Mays Business School, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    Lorraine Eden

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  1. Peter Rodriguez
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  2. Donald S Siegel
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  3. Amy Hillman
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  4. Lorraine Eden
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Correspondence to Lorraine Eden.

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Rodriguez, P., Siegel, D., Hillman, A. et al. Three lenses on the multinational enterprise: politics, corruption, and corporate social responsibility. J Int Bus Stud 37, 733–746 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400229

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