Introduction to the Special Issue on Strategic Planning, Autonomy, and Control Processes in Multinational Corporations

The multinational corporation has always presented challenging management tasks. Operating in a larger number of business settings than most other corporations, the managements of such firms encounter an unusually complex set of opportunities and threats. The multinational corporation faces considerable challenges at the so-called business level of strategic management, involving competition with many other national and multinational firms to reach a wide variety of customers within a correspondingly wide variety of product/market settings. Equally complex, perhaps, is the task of developing an overall consistent portfolio strategy, given the intricacy of balancing a multitude of business involvements in order to maintain reasonable economic and political risk profiles. At the same time, strategic resources, such as funds, technology, and human resources, must be transferred within a worldwide portfolio context.© 1984 JIBS. Journal of International Business Studies (1984) 15, 9–10