Academic Site & Blog

A Modern Typology of MNEs

The organization of modern MNEs is more complicated than the old models of international exporter, multidomestic (Porter, 86), and global (Yip.89). As a consequence of the intrinsic limitations of each of the pure structures as an optimal form to compete globally, MNEs evolved from these traditional forms into more sophisticated structures intended to combine the advantages of multidomestic and global structures. Initially these led to the concept of transnational corporation (high localization/high global integration) developed and widely studied by Bartlett, Ghoshal, and other scholars (Bartlett.92,Bartlett.88,Bartlett.87,Bartlett.87b, Harzing.00,Yip.94). However, the transnational model is still primarily considered a mindset, idea, or ideal rather than an organization structure found on many MNEs (Segal-Horn.99).