Transnational Corporations, Technology Transfer and Development: A Bibliographic Sourcebook

By Tagi Sagafi-nejad and Robert Belfield

Transnational Corporations, Technology Transfer and Development: A Bibliographic Sourcebook compiles references one can use in studying transnational corporations and related topics. The compilation divides various source materials into eight major themes. The sourcebook presents publications on the development of science and technology; the International Technology Gap and the NIEO; and transnational corporations and technology. The other groups of publications compiled mainly focus on the anatomy of corporate technology transfer; technology transfer and host countries; and sectoral analysis, wherein several case studies are included. The last two sets of reference materials are concerned with technology transfer and the home country and its regulation. This sourcebook will be invaluable to those in need of lists of reference materials on transnational corporations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Release date: Jun 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483189796

Book preview

Transnational Corporations, Technology Transfer and Development

A Bibliographic Sourcebook

Tagi Sagafi-nejad

Foreword by Howard V. Perlmutter

Table of Contents

Cover image

Title page

Inside Front Cover

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Setting: Science and Technology in Development

Publisher Summary

Chapter 2: The International Technology Gap and the NIEO

Publisher Summary

Chapter 3: Transnational Corporations and Technology

Publisher Summary

Chapter 4: The Anatomy of Corporate Technology Transfer: Modes, Costs and Management

Publisher Summary

Chapter 5: Technology Transfer and Host Countries: Appropriateness, Dependencia and Sovereignty

Publisher Summary

Chapter 6: Sectoral Analysis: Technology Transfer Case Studies

Publisher Summary

Chapter 7: Technology Transfer and the Home Country

Publisher Summary

Chapter 8: Regulating Technology Transfer: Control Systems and Mechanisms

Publisher Summary

Index

About the Authors

Inside Front Cover

Pergamon Titles of Related Interest

Feld MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS AND UN POLITICS

Negandhi FUNCTIONING OF THE MULTINATIONAL CORPORATION

Perlmutter/Sagafi-nejad INTERNATIONAL TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER

Sagafi-nejad/Moxon/Perlmutter CONTROLLING INTERNATIONAL TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER

Related Journals*

BULLETIN OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY

CHINA–INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

LONG RANGE PLANNING

OMEGA, THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT SCIENCE

TECHNOLOGY IN SOCIETY

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*Free specimen copies available upon request.

Copyright

Pergamon Press Offices:

Copyright © 1980 Pergamon Press Inc.

Second printing, 1984

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Sagafi-nejad, Tagi, 1941-

Transnational corporations, technology transfer and development.

(Pergamon policy studies on international development)

Includes index.

1. Technology transfer. 2. International business enterprises. I. Belfield, Robert, 1951-

joint author. II. Title. III. Series.

T174.3.S23 1980 338.91 80-36887

ISBN 0-08-026299-6

All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

To our families with love

Foreword

Howard V. Perlmutter

It is the explicit premise of the research programs of the Worldwide Institutions Center of The Wharton School that the Transnational Corporation (TNC) is already undergoing a major transformation in both the concept of its essential functions and the direction of its evolution. The present collection of source materials is a significant contribution in that it contains the factors and forces which will govern the TNC transformation process.

Sagafi-nejad and Belfield have accomplished the formidable task of assembling a selective but extensive bibliography around some basic propositions: a) that science and technology are crucial to development, b) that the nature of the gaps between rich and poor countries and the more and less industrialized advanced countries is technology-specific and infrastructure-related, c) that TNCs are the key actors in the international trade in technology.

The editors also provide evidence through the assembled readings regarding the current debate which surrounds the TNC concerning the modes, appropriateness, costs and consequences to the technology transfer and development process–especially for the technological self-reliance of nation states.

The readings make clear that there is no perceived identity of interest between the home and host countries in the technology transfer process–something which might have lead to normative research on transnational development of technology.

Upon examination of the readings as an aggregate, we can see that they reflect the present relative directions of the flow of technology: a) within the advanced countries from the U.S. to Western Europe and Japan b) from the advanced countries to the less industrialized countries. It is evident that much data is missing because it has not been collected, or it is difficult to collect and/or the flows are still relatively small. There is at this stage of our knowledge, less illumination regarding the nature and extent of the flows of technology in such directions as: a) flows within the so-called advanced countries from Western Europe to the U.S. and Japan, and from Japan to Western Europe and the U.S.; b) flows between the more industrialized countries and the socialist countries of Eastern Europe; c) flows from and between socialist countries of Eastern Europe and the People’s Republic of China and the less industrialized countries and d) flows from and between the less industrialized countries to the more industrialized countries.

This data shortage may not be surprising, but from the perspective of an increasingly interdependent global industrial system, wherein the TNC seeks to be both viable and legitimate, we can anticipate some features of the TNC transformation process. The transformation of the TNC is likely to occur in a series of successive adaptations and accomodations of the TNC with its various key stakeholders, including the shareholders, customers, suppliers, joint venture partners, licensees, employees (and trade unions), but most especially governments.

We need as well to understand the global flows that occur in the various industrial and commercial sectors, in high, intermediate, and low technology, in the extractive, service, manufacturing and agricultural areas. For if there will be a struggle for global niches or market segments from advanced developing and socialist countries (as appears likely,) there should be differences in technology development strategies.

A major shift in our thinking is necessary as regards the definition of the TNC. By UN definition, TNCs come in many varieties: small, medium and large, domiciled in advanced, socialist and third world countries, private, mixed in ownership or state controlled. The flows between these different types of international actors has not been studied because as yet we have no clear image of the networks which carry technology around the world.

Technology, it has been said, is out of the bag, and the world of micro-electronics will accelerate the process. Access to the full range of technologies is within the grasp of most countries by the end of the 1980s.

But we need to consider not technology in the abstract, but the way it related to the global Problematique, which includes both danger and opportunity. Technology can be used to assure collective violence as well as meet basic human needs, to further endanger the ecosystem or to harmonise and explore its potentialities. Thus, the ends and the means are related.

The TNC’s essential functions in the area of transferring and developing technology, its structures, policies, and capabilities are likely to become less oriented towards unilateral flows and more oriented towards bilateral and multilateral technology flows between and within advanced, developing and socialist countries.

Much depends upon how governments and TNCs try to rebuild this transformed global industrial system and upon how accomodations are reached as regards the universal need to increase some measure of technological self-reliance in each country. But it is likely that the TNC will be the main arena and vehicle through which this learning process will take place in its transformed state.

We at The Worldwide Institutions Research Center are happy to support this volume, and express our gratitude to the editors for their contribution in understanding the past and present literature on Technology Transfer and Development. We hope there will be successive updatings.

The value system underlying these and all efforts of the Worldwide Institutions Research Center should remain explicit: we need to learn how to build a just global industrial system based on partnerships which are mutually rewarding, on at least moderate trust, in the context of a global political system where humans and not technology are the ends.

Director. Howard V. Perlmutter,     Worldwide Institutions Research Center, The Wharton School

Introduction

Tagi Sagafi-nejad,     University of Washington and University of Texas at Austin

Robert Belfield,     Smithsonian Institution

The appropriate utilization of modern technology and science is among the major requisites of national development, industrialization, and material prosperity. The most important actor in the generation, application, and international transfer of modern technology, especially since World War II, has been the Transnational Corporation (TNC). The emergence of the TNCs and the evolution of their global reach vis-a-vis the modernization needs of nation-states, has made the subject area now known as Technology Transfer one of the most complex but fascinating topics of our time. This new research area has become a prism for a constellation of related issues, among which are the role of technology and science in industrialization, the gaps between rich and poor nations–and the gaps’ implications for both, the TNC as both the culprit and the savior, and the New International Economic Order.

Technology Transfer and Development (TTD) has emerged as an independent research area only recently. The first major institutions to investigate the subject in a subtained manner was the United Nations. Various UN bodies and agencies, such as the UN Secretariat, UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNIDO, ILO, UNITAR, WIPO, ECE, ECLA, ECAFE, ECWA, The World Bank, UNDP, and others, have undertaken research into various aspects of TTD since the early 1960s. Such other international and regional organizations as the OECD, the Organization of American States, the Andean Common Market, and others, have also dealt with the subject. An interesting aspect of this field of inquiry is the rapid acceleration of interest and involvement by nearly all of the above institutions in the study of numerous dimensions of TTD.

Similarly, interest in technology transfer has accelerated in a variety of academic disciplines.

As one of the truly multi-disciplinary subjects of inquiry, TT has provided a conceptual anchor for many traditional disciplines. Those doing research on this subject now include political scientists, economists, sociologists, anthropologists, engineers, natural scientists as well as the interdisciplinarians in international relations, international business, comparative management, history of science and technology, among others. These efforts and studies relate primarily to the concerns of each discipline, but they also contribute to an understanding of TTD. Certainly, they demonstrate the interdisciplinary nature of the subject.

This rapid proliferation of studies by various scholars and institutions has pinpointed with increasing intensity the need for a comprehensive compilation of citations. Our initial interest in such a collection grew out of the Technology Transfer and Development Project which began in 1974 at the Worldwide Institutions Research Center of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Both the TTD Project and a graduate seminar on the subject led us to acknowledge the critical need for a comprehensive and up-to-date bibliography. This led to a first edition of the present work, which was published through the Worldwide Institutions Group of the Wharton School in 1976. That volume contained nearly 2000 references and was organized in a similar fashion to the present one. Since the first edition was published, the literature on TTD has continued its exponential growth, as a result of the continued world-wide interest in the subject.

Added impetus to the already accelerating interest in TT was provided as a result of massive preparatory work which preceded UNCTAD V in Manila in May of 1979 and the equally massive work which was sparked the world over in preparation for the first United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for Development (UNCSTED) in Vienna in August of the same year.

When the International Conference on Technology Transfer Control Systems was held in 1979, an Addendum was produced and made available to the participants.

The present volume is consolidated result of the first edition and the Addendum. It is supplemented and corrections have been made.

We are, however, painfully aware of the built-in obsolescence associated with an effort as massive as the present one: as soon as bibliography is off the press, it will be out of date. And yet it is the only reference source available in its kind by virtue not only of comprehensiveness of coverage but also because each sub-topic is organized separately and introduced in a short introductory essay.

The purpose of this bibliography is to bind together useful materials from academic and non-academic sources–as a means of identifying the state of the art of our understanding.

The location of relevant citations proved to be our central difficulty as the wide range of cited journals and documents testifies. The following guides to literature proved useful to our search: