The Firm and the Market - Studies on the Multinational Enterprise and the Scope of the Firm (Hardcover, Mit Press ed.)

In this book, a well known theorist of the multinational firm extends hismajor contributions to encompass the scope of the firm in general. Casson presents amodel showing how the different activities of the firm - R & D, production, marketing, and distribution, for example - are linked in a way that is just asimportant in determining the scope of the firm as are the traditional factors ofmarket share or product type.Casson infers from an extensive consideration of thehistory, development, and organization of the multinational that the scope of anyfirm is determined by the way it resolves the problem of coordinating theseproduction activities; the possibility of its becoming a multinational, in fact, depends on the strategic problems encountered in these operations.After chapters inwhich he critically reviews the literature and sets forth his own theoreticalinsights, the author looks at case studies of topical concern in the shipping, construction, and motor vehicle industries in order to explain contemporaryrationalization and restructuring in manufacturing.Mark Casson is Professor ofEconomics at the University of Reading and author of Economics of Unemployment: AnHistorical Perspective (MIT Press 1984).