The Origins of the International Competitiveness of Firms : The Impact of Location and Ownership in the Professional Service Industries

This important book focuses on the impact of home countries on the international competitiveness of transnational corporations (TNCs). It seeks to explain the geographic concentration of the most internationally competitive TNCs in a single or very few countries, and their uneven performance at these concentration points. The theoretical framework for this analysis is based on a link between the location advantages of countries and the ownership advantages of firms. The book focuses on professional service TNCs as the competitive advantages of these firms are based entirely on intangible, often mobile assets, and they thus provide a striking illustration for the ways in which such assets shape the competitiveness of firms. Analyses of TNCs in several professional service industries based in various countries reveal the dynamic balance between the home and the foreign countries in which the TNCs operate, as well as the combination of country- and firm-specific attributes in shaping the competitiveness of TNCs and the subsequent patterns of global competition. The Origins of the International Competitiveness of Firms extends our knowledge of the determinants of the international competitiveness of TNCs, and will be of interest to scholars and students of international business and business strategy, and to those working in the fields of international competition, trade and investment.