ABSTRACT
In contemporary times the concepts and processes of globalization and restructuring have captured our imaginations and understandings of grand-scale social change. For many, it is the globalization of finance and production that represents the rightful focus of analysis of contemporary transformations. For others, it is the social realms of labour and work that more meaningfully advance our understandings of what is happening to our world and to our place within it (Harrod 1987; Cox 1987; O’Brien 2000b). However, a preoccupation with all things global has tended to lead conventional approaches in international political economy (IPE), together with perspectives in economics, political science and business studies, to focus on one particular site of production and work: the multinational corporation. Firms have come to represent the primary vehicles of globalization, acting to intensify competition, reacting to technological imperatives and transmitting knowledge and practices of restructuring across national boundaries. As a result, our understanding of firms in the global political economy have tended to focus on their actions and reactions in pursuit of restructuring rather than on the activities and social relations that inform and contest these actions. Indeed, not only has the contested nature of the restructuring of firms been neglected, but it has become the vogue to present globalization as actually decoupling the firm from its relationships with state and society.
