Book Chapter
Transnational Corporations and Technology Flows

This chapter analyses international systems of governance for transnational corporations (TNCs) and for technology transfer in the emerging world. This world provides a very different setting for industrial growth from that of half a century ago, when much of the ‘development strategy’ was launched. Technical change is now more rapid and pervasive, affecting most activities in developing countries. It is shrinking economic distance dramatically, exposing enterprises to intense and immediate competition so far unprecedented in history. Trade plays a much larger role in economic life, and much of it is handled by large transnationals and an increasing proportion of trade and production is integrated across national boundaries under the aegis of the TNC. Technology and direct investment flows are now not subject to much direct regulation at the international level, traditional controls on these flows are one of the casualties of liberalisation and globalisation.