Book Review: Storm Over the Multinationals: The Real Issues

• Author: Corwin D. Edwards
• Published date: 01 December 1977
• Date: 01 December 1977
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0003603X7702200412
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Raymond Vernon,

Storm

Over the Multinationals: The Real

Issues, Cambridge:

Harvard

University

Press

(1977),260

pp., $12.50.

This important interpretative book distills both the re-

sults of 15 years of research by

Harvard's

Center

for

Inter-

national Affairs, of which Professor Vernon is director, and

the results of the rapidly increasing amount of writing

that

has emerged from research elsewhere.

Its

purpose is to

identify what

Professor

Vernon regards as. the real issues

that

are

arising about multinational enterprises and to dis-

tinguish these from what he considers misconceptions. The

real issues

appear

when the links among national units

that

necessarily exist in a multinational enterprise and the control

from the center

that

is present to some degree in multina-

tional enterprises

that

are

successful become obstacles to suc-

cess by one or more national governments in achieving some

purpose

that

the government considers important. The mis-

conceptions consist in

attributing

to multinational enterprises

responsibility for problems

that

are

neither created

nor

sig-

nificantly enhanced by the structure of such enterprises,

but

are

consequences of the decline in the autonomy of national

economic systems

that

has resulted from technological

achievements in reducing the effectiveness of distance as an

obstacle to communication and transportation. Since expan-

sion by multinational enterprises has been a conspicuous

aspect of the interpenetration of national economies, these

enterprises have become symbols of

that

interpenetration,

and tend to be held responsible for

its

results, whether or

not

their

international structure enhances the problems

that

it creates.

Three aspects of the

strategy

of multinational enterprises

are

the focal points of

Professor

Vernon's analysis: (a) inno-

vative technology, often developed in one country

and

im-

perfectly suited to other countries into which

it

is introduced;

(b) a drive

for

stability, which has been sought by numerous

means, including scale of operations,

barriers

to entry, diver-

sification, restrictive agreements, joint ventures, follow-the-

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