Abstract
Transnational corporations (TNCs) are actively involved in political and economic games in national and international arenas in order to sustain their competitiveness. Powerful States—be they from the western world, Asia or Latin America—participate in these games by supporting their TNCs through economic diplomacy mechanisms. When TNCs operate abroad in weak institutional environments, such as many African countries, there is a strong incentive to use their relatively larger political and economic powers to secure rents. Therefore, they are likely to develop predatory practices such as human rights violations or natural environment damage. Effective regulations against predation depend not only on their intrinsic quality but also on the institutional environment and the behavior of parties involved in their implementation. The development of a global code of conduct requires a sound understanding of TNCs’ behavioral dynamics in relation to their original countries. Drawing on North et al.’s (2009, 2013) taxonomy on social orders, and building on Greif and Tadelis’ (2010) concept of crypto-morality, I build an analytical framework to assess the risk of predation that arises in the interactions between a TNC and a host social order. TNCs adjust their behavior to adapt to their institutional environments, and they make a cost-benefit assessment to arbitrate between a responsible or a predatory behavior. I demonstrate that regulations that force TNCs and States to practice transparency and that impose dissuasive sanctions are most likely to promote ethical and responsible behavior.
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Notes
- 1.
My concept of “predator-prey dynamics” does not refer to the equations of Lotka-Volterra, also called “predator-prey models”, that model the dynamics of interactions between prey and predators’ biological systems.
- 2.
Pigou (1932) introduced the concepts of social costs and private costs. Social costs are all costs borne by society (including private costs) due to the existence of the business, while private costs are all costs incurred or considered by the author of the activity.
- 3.
For example, for various reasons including refusal to sign or ratify the Rome Statute, the United States and the United Kingdom have been able to evade their responsibilities in the war and chaos in Iraq since 2003.
- 4.
The UN Resolution 1973 in 2011 which enabled the international military intervention in Libya was diverted by leading powerful States, including France, and this led to the killing of Muammar Gaddafi and destabilization of the whole Sahel.
- 5.
For example, in Guatemala in 1954 against Jacobo Arbenz (who had openly questioned the land interests of the US TNC United Fruit Company), or in Iran in 1953 against Mohammed Mossadegh (who had decided upon the nationalization of oil, then controlled by the British company Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, when oil was essential to the recovery of England after World War II) (Le Monde 2013; NSA 2013).
- 6.
- 7.
The characteristics of the social order will be specified when defining the prey potential (Sect. 3).
- 8.
Governance should not be reduced to the ‘good governance’ doctrine constructed for developing countries in the 1980s by the Bretton Woods institutions and international development finance institutions for structural adjustment plans and democratic reforms. Such an approach of governance is exogenous. In contrast, governance is a mix of endogenous leadership and relevant decisions that are successfully implemented.
- 9.
For more information on this organization and index construction, see http://mo.ibrahim.foundation/fr/iiag/.
- 10.
For more information on this index, see https://www.globalinnovationindex.org/.
- 11.
This adjustment involves a shift (in equal proportion) to the right on the Governance axis and up on the Innovation axis.
- 12.
This cost-benefit analysis has been introduced in Lado (2016).
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Lado, H. (2019). Behavioral Dynamics and Regulation of Transnational Corporations. In: Rahim, M. (eds) Code of Conduct on Transnational Corporations. CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10816-8_4
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