Transnational Corporations and Local Firms in Developing Countries – Linkages and Upgrading

Reception and book launch.

The book is written by the Business in Development group: Michael W. Hansen, Henrik Schaumburg-Müller (eds.)

Contibuters: Michael W. Hansen (CBDS), Henrik Schaumburg-Müller (CBDS), John Kuada (Aalborg University) , Olav Jull Sørensen (Aalborg University), Peter Wad (CBDS) and Søren Jeppesen (CBDS).

The book studies the organization and effects of linkages between transnational corporations - mainly Danish - and local firms in developing countries. It is based on a number of case studies of linkage collaborations and a survey of about 90 Danish firms and their relations to partners in developing countries. The analysed host countries are Ghana, India, Malaysia, South Africa and Vietnam.

The book is a contribution to the emerging literature on firm strategy in developing countries, offering new empirical evidence of the multi-facetted and complex nature of cross border inter-firm linkages. It documents how even small firms in both developed and developing countries engage in, and can benefit from, cross border linkages.

The target groups for this book are academics with an interest in business and development studies, policy makers and managers within private sector development, and students of international business and development studies.

Reviews:

"Global trade increasingly shifts from spontaneous market transactions to structured transnational business linkages where lead firms, mostly from OECD countries, define the rules of the game. This book makes a major contribution to our understanding of global business linkage formation. It is innovative in two ways: First, it provides comprehensive scientific evidence how such linkages help developing country firms to learn and upgrade. Second, it focuses on small and medium-sized firms from a small OECD economy, rather than large transnationals, showing the enormous degree of internationalization and development spillovers from these firms. This book is an invaluable contribution to the debate on development opportunities in an era of globalization."

Tilman Altenburg, Head of Department, German Institute for Development Studies.