The ORIGINS OF THE
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITIVENESS OF FIRMS
This important book focuses
on the impact of home countries on the international competitiveness of Transnational
Corporations (TNCs). It seeks to explain both the geographic concentration of the most
internationally competitive TNCs in a single or very few countries, and their uneven
performance at these concentration points. The theoretical framework for this analysis is
based on a link between the location advantages of countries and the ownership advantages
of firms.
The book focuses on
professional service TNCs as the competitive advantages of these firms are based entirely
on intangible, often mobile assets, and they thus provide a striking illustration for the
ways in which such assets shape the competitiveness of firms.
Analyses of TNCs in several
professional service industries based in various countries reveal the dynamic balance
between the home and the foreign countries in which the TNCs operate, as well as the
combination of country- and firm-specific attributes in shaping the competitiveness of
TNCs and the subsequent patterns of global competition.
The Origins of the
International Competitiveness of Firms extends our knowledge of the determinants of the
international competitiveness of TNCs, and will be of interest to scholars and students of
international business and business strategy, and to those working in the fields of
international competition, trade and investment.
242pp