ies. A general aspect of reorganization in a firm is that managers located at different points in an organization may have very different attitudes to, and arguments, for or against, a specific change. Melin (1977) found that arguments both for and against centralization of purchasing in a multi-unit firm were well articulated. Managers arguing for, and those arguing against, all related to effectiveness aspects concerning the firm's relationships to suppliers. The managers can be interpreted to argue based on different network theories. Markoczy (2000) reports that the strongest determinant of similarity of beliefs about a proposed strategic change was by being a member of the functional area favored by the change. Neelankavil et al. (2000), in a four country study, found differences in perceptions about what affects the managerial performance of middle-level management. The existence of such differences could influence the outcome of the globalizing firm's reorganization.
1. Influencing factors to MNC 对跨国企业的影响因素
A multinational is a firm that controls operations or income-generating assets in more than one country. Multinationals are owned in their home economy and invest in host economies. It has sometimes been suggested that multinationality requires operations in a minimum number of countries, usually five or six, or that a firm active across borders should be certain size before it can be called a multinational, but there are enormous problems with such restrictive conditions. Since 1970s the United Nations has used the term translational to describe the same phenomenon. Firms with particularly extensive international operations have sometimes been described as global.
A firm whose sole international involvement is the exporting of goods or services from its home base is not a multinational. A multinational engages in one or two types of foreign investment. Portfolio investment involves the acquisition of foreign securities by individuals or institutions without any control over the management of the foreign entity. Foreign direct investment (FDI) involves management control. Multinationals engage in FDI because they own and control assets in foreign countries. They may do this either through acquiring an existing firm or by making a Greenfield investment involving the establishment of completely new operation.
The most straightforward example of multinational investment occur when a company establishes a wholly owned subsidiary in a foreign country. However , there are a range of intermediate and alternative contractual modes available between wholly owned foreign subsidiaries a and exporting, involving both equity and non-equity arrangements. Firms may share ownership in a joint venture. Nonequity arrangements include licensing, which involves a contract between independent firms to transfer technologies, rights or resource; franchising , when a company grants another company grants another company the right to do business in a certain way over a certain period of time in a specified place; cartels, which are agreements between independent firms to maintain prices or limit output, and strategic alliances, which are arrangements between firms to share facilities or cooperate in new product development.
Crossing borders raises major strategic and organisational issues for firms. This is because they encounter alien policies culture, languages and laws. As a result, foreign firms experience the 'liability
of foreignness' (Zaheer 1995). The scale of this 'liability' rests
