I en konkurrenskraftig marknad söker sig multinationella företag till lågskatteländer för attmaximera vinsterna. Luckor i lagstiftningen samt utvecklingsländer som söker kapital harfrämjat att många multinationella företag bedriver strategier för att undvika eller undgåbeskattning. Dessa strategier är inget som företag väljer att presentera i deras årsredovisning.Det samma gäller de sociala konsekvenser som skatteplanering kan medföra. Det finns delademeningar huruvida företagens beskattning borde ses som en del av företagens ansvar. Syftetmed studien är därför att lyfta fram hur transparenta multinationella företag är i sinårsredovisning kring beskattning och internprissättning till följd av skärpta riktlinjer. Baseratpå rekommendationerna i BEPS action 13 vill vi skapa en medvetenhet i hur bristandetransparens av beskattning samt internprissättning hos multinationella företag kan ses som ettCSR-problem. Studien grundar sig i en tvärsnittsstudie med en kvalitativ ansats. Genom eninnehållsanalys har vi samlat in datamaterial i form av årsredovisningar från ett urval av sexmultinationella företag. Utifrån den teoretiska referensramen har empirin analyserats vilkethar gett en förståelse huruvida företagen är transparenta kring sin beskattning ochinternprissättning. Resultatet visade på att det fanns en variation huruvida företag ärtransparenta i sin årsredovisning, generellt sätt höll sig samtliga företag på en låg nivå avtransparens. Vi kan konstatera att samtliga företag uttryckte att beskattningen utsatteföretagen för en riskexponering. Ett flertal av företagen uttryckte vidtagna åtgärder i och medimplementeringen av BEPS action 13, ändå var det bara två företag som såg beskattningensom en del av CSR. / In a competitive market, multinational companies are using low-tax countries to maximizetheir profits. Gaps in the legislation and developing countries searching for capital are twofactors why many multinational companies are undertaking strategies to avoid taxation. Thesestrategies are not disclosed in their annual report. The same applies to the social consequencesthat tax planning can entail. There are divided opinions whether corporate taxation should beseen as part of the corporate responsibility. The purpose of the study is therefore to highlightwhether multinational companies are transparent in their annual report regarding taxation andtransfer pricing as a result of new guidelines. Based on the recommendations in BEPS action13, the study aims to raise awareness of how insufficient transparency of taxation as well astransfer pricing of multinational companies can be seen as a CSR problem. The study is basedon a cross-sectional method with a qualitative approach. Through a content analysis data wascollected in the form of annual reports on a selection of six multinational companies. Basedon the theoretical framework, the empirical study has been analysed in order to determinewhether the companies are transparent about taxation and transfer pricing. The result showedthat generally all companies held a low level of transparency within their annual reports.However, all companies expressed that the taxation exposed the companies to a risk. Amajority of the companies expressed taking action as a result of the implementation of BEPSaction 13. However, only two companies saw the taxation as part of CSR.This thesis will continue in Swedish.

This dissertation examines the role of Singer in the modernization of sewing practices in Spain and Mexico from 1860 to 1940. Singer marketing was founded on gendered views of women’s work and gendered perceptions of the home. These connected with sewing practices in Spain and Mexico, where home sewing remained economically and culturally important throughout the 1940s. "Atlantic Threads" is the first study of the US-owned multinational in the Hispanic World. I demonstrate that sewing practices, and especially practices related to home sewing that have been considered part of the private sphere and therefore not an important historical matter, contributed to the building of one the first global corporation. I examine Singer corporate records and business strategies that have not been considered by other scholars such as the creation of the Embroidery Department in the late nineteen-century. Likewise, this dissertation challenges traditional narratives that have assumed that Spain and Mexico were peripheral to modernity. I look at Singer corporate records in Spain and Mexico and at regional government and cultural sources to demonstrate how Singer integrated Spain and Mexico within its business organization. Singer's marketing was focused on the consumer, which contributed to make the company part of local sewing businesses and cultures.

This study has been primarily concerned with the pattern of economic development and the role of the multinational corporations (MNC's) in that process in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Two contrasting theoretical frameworks were adopted to assess the pattern of economic development followed in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from 1970 through 1983. The first theoretical perspective is the neoclassical approach to economic development which postulates that the productive resources at the disposal of a country and the institutions developed to guide the prudent use of them are paramount to a balanced development. On the other hand, Hymer's contrasting perspective is based on the Law of Uneven Development. Essentially, Hymer claimed that inequality is built into the growth mechanisms of the present day world capitalist economic system that shapes the international economy through the agency of the multinational corporations. Therefore, any involvement by the MNC's is necessarily hierarchical, and characterized by dominance and dependence as well as wealth and poverty, particularly between the industrial countries of Western Europe and North America and the less developed countries in the Third World societies. Ironically, the Saudi Arabian case shows that Hymer's Law of Uneven Development is questionable. First, instead of the location of a country in the international economic system as the determinant of high standards and even development, the natural endowment translated into surplus capital must be viewed as the key to that process. Second, Saudi Arabian surplus capital was aided by foreign technologies, especially from multinationals based in the United States. In this connection, the MNC's played a positive role through their supplies of skilled manpower and efficient technologies to transform the desert of Saudi Arabia into a world class center of modern infrastructures and industrial complexes. Thus, the intervention of the multinationals in Saudi Arabian economic development has led to a situation of shared benefits; in which the interests of both the host country and the transnational enterprises have been well served. Finally, the Saudi Arabian experience demonstrates that it is possible for the parent country, the host country and the multinationals as parties to the investment process to adjust to each other with mutual trust instead of conflict and confrontation which had characterized many Third World countries' and multinationals' dealings in recent years.

Dans le contexte des effets de la mondialisation sur une économie émergente, le travail de recherche présenté ici s’attache à démontrer le processus d’ouverture internationale du manager industriel indien. Face aux mutations auxquelles sont confrontées les entreprises de la dixième économie mondiale, il est à la fois l’acteur de l’internationalisation et l’objet des transformations induites par celle-ci. Une recherche empirique et qualitative menée dans des entreprises industrielles indiennes décrit et modélise cette ouverture internationale pour la catégorie des managers intermédiaires, par le biais d’un programme de formation supérieure en gestion international indien, qui sert de cas d’étude : le Post Graduate Diploma in Management for Exécutive – PGDMX- dont le modèle réfèrent est américain. S’appuyant sur une analyse réflexive du discours de managers indiens diplômés PGPMX, ce travail s’attache à s’interroger sur l’homogénéité des pratiques et des théories managériales vis-à-vis de la spécificité de la culture du management à l’indienne. La mobilisation des concepts de la théorie de la pratique de Pierre Bourdieu, conduit à porter son attention sur l’existence d’un habitus international, et d’un gain en capital symbolique, culturel et social pour le manager diplômé du PGPMX. Les résultats montrent aussi une tension entre les nouveaux principes managériaux et les valeurs ancrées dans la culture indienne, en même temps qu’un processus « d’indigénisation sociale » du diplôme. Ce travail s’adresse, certes, aux entreprises publiques indiennes et en particulier aux services RH sur la gestion des talents, mais aussi aux Ecoles de management en Inde et en Occident; ainsi qu'aux entrepreneurs étrangers qui souhaitent développer des activités en Inde, en mettant en évidence la force de la violence symbolique, liée à toute intrusion culturelle, et source de résistance de par la nature autonome de la tradition indienne, à la fois industrielle, culturelle, et humaine. / In the context of the effects of globalization on an emerging economy, the research presented here is aimed at demonstrating the process of internationalization of middle managers in Indian industrial enterprises, via advanced management training. These very large public enterprises are both, key actors engaged in deploying globalization effects, and the objects of those transformations. Based on empirical and qualitative study, using semi-structured interviews carried out in these large Indian industrial enterprises, what follows is a report describing and modeling the internationalization of a panel of former participants of a Post Graduated Diploma in Management for Executives (PGPMX), of American MBA inspiration. The originality of this research is to offer a reflexive report of the nature of this training, as the participants experienced it, and the consequences for them professionally and personally. This allows the investigation of the fit of managerial practices and theory as offered by business schools, using the US model vis-à-vis the managerial demands in Indian enterprises, wrapped in the specificities of the Indian culture. As an interpretative strategy, the data gathered from the extensive field work was treated in reference to the project of Pierre Bourdieu—with particular attention to the figure of habitus, and special focus on modifications of capital’—symbolic, cultural and social; Result show a gain in all three, and reveal a residual tension between the new management principles, and the traditional values. This research, should be of value for the Human Resource Development function of Indian Industrial Enterprises, and for the schools of management—both Indian and Western, that offer these training programs. It should also interest foreign enterprises that seek entry into the Indian market, by enabling a better comprehension of the ‘symbolic violence’, associated with the intrusion of foreign cultural practices and values.

Rechargeable batteries are set to power sustainable development by 2030. In this context, the increasingly important role of certain ‘strategic minerals’ used in emerging renewable technologies has become highly topical. As the geopolitical landscape is changing as the world moves away from fossil fuels, a surge in demand for these minerals will entail an increase of production at unprecedented levels. A case in point and a focus of analysis in this thesis is the extractive sector sourcing one of the most important of transition minerals ‘cobalt’ that is predominantly mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Against the challenge of a secret and non-transparent mining industry, this thesis has identified and listed all operational and openly communicative Multinational Corporations (MNC’s) extracting cobalt in the DRC. By conducting a critical discourse analysis on seven different cobalt extracting MNC’s, the analysis unveils different ways in which the companies ‘frame’ cobalt as strategic. Thus, a new and relevant ‘material-discursive framework’ has been utilised to bridge the underlying discourses of these companies with their material practices relating to cobalt. By employing this theoretical framework, the findings point at three main logics of corporate narrative the MNC’s in the sample use to form and maintain their operational activities: securitisation, environmentalism and developmentalism. Central discourses within these themes point at the way in which companies seek to maintain their economic security and legitimacy in an increasingly contested industry by continuously representing themselves as central actors with the responsibility and knowledge to deliver sustainable development for local communities affected by the industry in the DRC and for the sustainability transition.

No description available.

No description available.

Yes / This paper investigates the links between institutional systems and the entry mode of Multinational Corporations (MNCs) in developing and transition countries (DTCs). An assessment is made of the reasons for the continuing use of international joint ventures (IJVs) in countries that have undergone reforms intended to lead to the development of wholly owned subsidiaries. The paper argues that formal and informal institutional constraints in DTCs lead to high transaction and uncertainty costs for MNCs, and that the use of IJVs is a rational response to attempt to lower these high costs. The paper follows the literature suggesting that IJVs are normally a `second best¿ entry mode in terms of the potential for foreign direct investment (FDI) to contribute to the development of DTCs. The reform process in Jordan is used to illustrate how institutional systems, especially informal institutional constraints, lead to high transaction and uncertainty costs. In the case of Jordan, this occurred despite a series of four reform packages seeking to reduce the institutional barriers to effective business activities. Interviews of 28 foreign companies provide the basis for an empirical assessment of the importance of both formal and informal institutional constraints and infrastructure problems. The paper includes an outline of a future research agenda that seeks to generalise and develop the results from Jordan to other DTCs.

No / Dominance effects are normally associated with multinational corporations (MNCs). However, we argue that a strong local competitor can create ‘dominance effects’ setting the institutional parameters for employment relations in multinational subsidiaries. Moreover such an effect can be persistent. In this case the Spanish-owned El Corte Inglés (ECI) used its power and influence to establish an employer's federation and two ‘yellow unions’. These yellow unions infiltrated the French-owned MNC Carrefour and most of the Spanish supermarket sector by the early 1980s and continue to dominate collective bargaining rounds and works council elections, marginalizing the main independent trade unions. This has resulted in poor pay and working conditions and a lack of effective employee representation across most of the Spanish supermarket sector. The fact that Carrefour established an international framework agreement to observe union rights in 2001 has as yet not changed this situation.

No / This article examines recent organising successes in the Carbones del Cerrejón coal mine, reversing the organisational crisis of the Colombian mining union, Sintracarbon. Using Wever's concept of ‘field-enlarging strategies’, we argue that these events were facilitated by the dissemination of organising experiences between affiliates of a Global Union Federation, International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), which recently merged to form IndustriALL. Additionally, we argue that this articulation between international and national unions, based on the principle of subsidiarity, was facilitated through sustained ICEM educational project activity, providing multiple entry points for Sintracarbon to operationalise its strategy and re-establish bargaining with multinational employers.