W14 Economic Globalization / Na Jieun

The transitional corporation(TNC) plays significant role in economic globalization.  This article address TNC in five issues.

First issue is the scale and geographical distribution of TNC's in the global economy. TNC is a firm which has the power to coordinate and control operations in more than one country, even if it does not own them. And TNC operates in different political, social and cultural environments.

Second issue is why and how corporations engage in transnational activities. This article divide this issue into two categories, market-oriented investment and asset-oriented investment. Because of saturation of firms in domestic market, firm think about expanding its market beyond its home country. And because of cheap labor, firm developed transitional activities.

Third issue is the geographical embeddedness of transnational corporations. TNCs are produced through an intricate process and they are bearers of their cognitive, social, political, economic characteristics.

Fourth issue is the webs of enterprise manifested in transitional production networks. TNC's can be considered as a dense network at the center of a web of relationships.

Last issue is the power relationships between TNC's and other actors in the global economy. TNC's production networks are influenced by multiscalar regulatory system. On the other hand, states try to minimize regulatory financial transactions.

It was interesting that there is a territorial asymmetry between the continuous territories of states and the discontinuous territories of TNCs.

The TNC is not limited to the economic. To view the TNC, it is necessary to have an approach to the relationship between the market and the country. In economic globalization, the debate about the influence of the country is still important because it is not a simple geographical connection but a political and social connection that surpasses economic connection. In other words, TNC's growth strategy and the influence of the leading countries can be regarded as strong independent variables in the globalization which is not the maximization of global expansion but the regional expansion. Therefore, the influence of the country should not be overlooked.