MNCs and Cross-Border Strategic Management

This chapter focuses on the strategic management of established multinational corporations (MNCs) that operate across multiple locations and how they have addressed the core strategic challenges of how to organize and manage geographically distributed locations. The chapter summarizes the conceptual foundations of MNC strategic management: the global integration / local responsiveness (GI/LR) framework, MNC capabilities for innovation and cross-border learning, the network model of the MNC, and the process approach. This chapter briefly surveys recent research trajectories, including subsidiary management, the role of headquarters, typologies of MNCs, and research on people and processes. Then the chapter identifies questions for future research in terms of four arenas: the changing balance of global integration and local responsiveness, managing regional strategies, cross-border learning in an era of growing resistance to globalization, and MNC responses to global external challenges of climate change and the threat of pandemics.