Introduction

Although global enterprises existed before the Second World War, they grew considerably in importance during the second half of the twentieth century. Labeled multinationals in the 1960s (Vernon 1977), more recently called global or transnational corporations (Bartlett and Ghoshal 1989), they have been a focus for intensive research in international business (see Forsgren and Björkman 1997; Birkinshaw and Hood 1998; Magretta 1999; Calori et al. 2000; Dunning 2000; Johnson and Turner 2000). They have been growing organically, but also, to a large extent, through mergers and acquisitions. The events at the beginning of the twenty-first century in the pharmaceutical and telecommunications industries provide significant examples of this development. Many of these global companies are now so large that their turnover is higher than the GNP of nation-states. These circumstances appear to provide them with considerable power in relation to governments. However, this does not mean that states are unimportant, nor are they relics of times gone by (cf. Jacobsson ch. 10). Even fierce proponents of the new system of world affairs like Friedman (2000) admit their significance.

Against this background, issues of corporate governance have become more and more in focus. However, so far discussions and analyses have mainly focused on the relationships between owners and management, leaving other actors in the governance field out of the analysis. This chapter suggests that such an approach has serious limitations and that wider perspectives should be used.