Multinational Corporations And Global Poverty Reduction

Finding ways to alleviate global poverty poses a major challenge for political leaders and intellectuals worldwide. The contributors to this volume, top scholars of international business, examine the effects of globalization on the developing world and address ways in which multinational corporations (MNCs) can play a positive role in the fight against poverty.

The essays illustrate how, by creating new business models, multinational enterprises are best equipped to relieve global poverty. By making investments among the poor – in pursuit of profit and shareholder wealth rather than as charity – the economic activity generated by investments would go a long way towards reducing poverty. The contributors show how following this strategy would lead to today’s poor becoming part of the economy and emerging as visible customers for MNCs. They address the many facets of this plan in chapters on: MNCs and host environment and policies, strategies and their impact, governments and civil society, international business models, and global institutions and social responsibility.

This unique solution to poverty reduction will be of great interest to scholars of international relations and business, international corporate managers and executives, government officials, and NGO executives dealing with global matters.

Contents:
Foreword
Preface
Part I: Introduction
1. The Role of MNCs in Alleviating Global Poverty
Subhash C. Jain and Sushil Vachani
Part II: The Host Environment and Policies
2. Multinational Enterprises in Less Developed Countries: Cultural and Economic Interactions Revisited
Peter J. Buckley
3. Role of Multinational Corporations in Poverty Reduction
Ben L. Kedia, Raj V. Mahto and Liliana Pérez Nordtveldt
4. FDI and Poverty Alleviation in Small Developing Countries
Alvin G. Wint
5. Linking Poverty and Foreign Direct Investment in Developing Countries
James O’Brien and Paul W. Beamish
Part III: Multinational Strategy
6. Business Strategies for Profitable Sales to the Poor: How Free Enterprise Can Fight Poverty
Raj Aggarwal
7. Multinational Enterprise Strategy for Developing Countries
Alan M. Rugman
8. Marketing and Global Poverty Reduction
John K. Ryans Jr.
Part IV: Multinationals’ Impact
9. A ‘Customer-Centric’ View of Global Economic Development
V. Kasturi Rangan and Arthur McCaffrey
10. Globalization, Multinational Enterprises and World Poverty
Pervez N. Ghauri and Peter J. Buckley
11. The Determinants of Employment of Affiliates of US Multinational Enterprises in Africa
Elizabeth Asiedu
Part V: Multinationals, Governments and Civil Society
12. Multinational Sourcing, Sustainable Agriculture and Alleviation of Global Poverty
Jonathan P. Doh
13. Achieving the Millennium Development Goals: Ways for MNCs to Effectively Interface with NGOs
Hildy Teegen
14. Poverty and MNEs in Emerging Markets
Robert Grosse
Part VI: IB Models
15. Multinational Corporations through the Uneven Development Lens
Doug Schuler, Stefanie Lenway and Lorraine Eden
16. Internationally Competitive Clusters in Developing Countries: India’s Information Technology Industry
Ravi Ramamurti
Part VII: Global Institutions and Social Responsibility
17. The Corporate Key: Using Big Business to Fight Global Poverty
George C. Lodge
18. Upgrading the Quality of Global Capitalism: The Moral Dimension
John H. Dunning
19. Multinationals’ Opportunity and Role in Alleviating Poverty
Sanjeev Agarwal, Rajshri Agarwal and John Wang
20. Socially Responsible Pricing: Lessons from the Pricing of AIDS Drugs in Developing Countries
Sushil Vachani and N. Craig Smith
Index