Control, Performance, and Knowledge Transfers in Large Multinationals: Unilever in the United States, 1945–1980

2002 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 435-478 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Jones

This article considers key issues relating to the organization and performance of large multinational firms in the post-Second World War period. Although foreign direct investment is defined by ownership and control, in practice the nature of that “control” is far from straightforward. The issue of control is examined, as is the related question of the “stickiness” of knowledge within large international firms. The discussion draws on a case study of the Anglo-Dutch consumer goods manufacturer Unilever, which has been one of the largest direct investors in the United States in the twentieth century. After 1945 Unilever's once successful business in the United States began to decline, yet the parent company maintained an arms-length relationship with its U.S. affiliates, refusing to intervene in their management. Although Unilever “owned” large U.S. businesses, the question of whether it “controlled” them was more debatable.

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-42
Author(s):  
John Burke ◽  
Travis Connell

The United States Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM) is one of six geographic combatant commands created to protect and defend the United States, its people, and its interests. This paper examines the key leader engagement (KLE) process and method of assessment for PACOM. PACOM has a pre-KLE process established to meet information requirements; however, the organization lacks a formal assessment method. KLEs are an instrumental tool to build relationships with partner nations and maintain command and control in PACOM’s area of responsibility. A structured and standardized KLE assessment system provides meaning to the data and is instrumental to evaluate each engagement and shape future KLEs. The KLE assessment – recording trip information, interpreting the data, and performing data visualization – was designed through benchmarking and performance measurement. Performance measures were developed to determine the success of each KLE by generating quantitative data from qualitative information. The development of a performance measurement-based assessment system promotes continuity and meaningful information to shape future engagements.


Somatechnics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rae Rosenberg

This paper explores trans temporalities through the experiences of incarcerated trans feminine persons in the United States. The Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) has received increased attention for its disproportionate containment of trans feminine persons, notably trans women of colour. As a system of domination and control, the PIC uses disciplinary and heteronormative time to dominate the bodies and identities of transgender prisoners by limiting the ways in which they can express and experience their identified and embodied genders. By analyzing three case studies from my research with incarcerated trans feminine persons, this paper illustrates how temporality is complexly woven through trans feminine prisoners' experiences of transitioning in the PIC. For incarcerated trans feminine persons, the interruption, refusal, or permission of transitioning in the PIC invites several gendered pasts into a body's present and places these temporalities in conversation with varying futures as the body's potential. Analyzing trans temporalities reveals time as layered through gender, inviting multiple pasts and futures to circulate around and through the body's present in ways that can be both harmful to, and necessary for, the assertion and survival of trans feminine identities in the PIC.


2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-74
Author(s):  
Hristov Manush

AbstractThe main objective of the study is to trace the perceptions of the task of an aviation component to provide direct aviation support to both ground and naval forces. Part of the study is devoted to tracing the combat experience gained during the assignment by the Bulgarian Air Force in the final combat operations against the Wehrmacht during the Second World War 1944-1945. The state of the conceptions at the present stage regarding the accomplishment of the task in conducting defensive and offensive battles and operations is also considered. Emphasis is also placed on the development of the perceptions of the task in the armies of the United States and Russia.


1994 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-213
Author(s):  
Michael P. Schoderbek

This paper examines the early accounting practices that were used to administer the United States' national land system. These practices are of significance because they provide insights on early governmental accounting and they facilitated an orderly settlement of the western territories. The analysis focuses on the record-keeping and control practices that were developed to meet the provisions of the Land Act of 1800 and to account for land office transactions. These accounting procedures were extracted from the correspondence between the Department of the Treasury and the various land officers.


Author(s):  
Benjamin Mangrum

This chapter argues that ongoing concerns about the rise of totalitarianism led writers and intellectuals in the United States to oppose social-democratic institutions after the Second World War. Familiar accounts about opposition to these institutions center on conservative politics. In contrast, this chapter argues that liberal thinkers invoked forms of aestheticism to combat what they perceived as the possible rise of totalitarianism in the United States. In order to document this under-explored trend in American political culture, this chapter establishes connections across writing by Lionel Trilling, Vladimir Nabokov, Hannah Arendt, Friedrich Hayek, the New Critics, and the American reception of Friedrich Nietzsche. These figures in postwar cultural life invoked aestheticism in the arenas of literature, philosophy, political action, and economics as a prophylactic to the perceived intrusions of an activist-managerial state.


Author(s):  
Takis S. Pappas

Based on an original definition of modern populism as “democratic illiberalism” and many years of meticulous research, Takis Pappas marshals extraordinary empirical evidence from Argentina, Greece, Peru, Italy, Venezuela, Ecuador, Hungary, the United States, Spain, and Brazil to develop a comprehensive theory about populism. He addresses all key issues in the debate about populism and answers significant questions of great relevance for today’s liberal democracy, including: • What is modern populism and how can it be differentiated from comparable phenomena like nativism and autocracy? • Where in Latin America has populism become most successful? Where in Europe did it emerge first? Why did its rise to power in the United States come so late? • Is Trump a populist and, if so, could he be compared best with Venezuela’s Chávez, France’s Le Pens, or Turkey’s Erdoğan? • Why has populism thrived in post-authoritarian Greece but not in Spain? And why in Argentina and not in Brazil? • Can populism ever succeed without a charismatic leader? If not, what does leadership tell us about how to challenge populism? • Who are “the people” who vote for populist parties, how are these “made” into a group, and what is in their minds? • Is there a “populist blueprint” that all populists use when in power? And what are the long-term consequences of populist rule? • What does the expansion, and possibly solidification, of populism mean for the very nature and future of contemporary democracy? Populism and Liberal Democracy will change the ways the reader understands populism and imagines the prospects of liberal democracy.


Author(s):  
Mary S. Barton

This is a book about terrorism, weapons, and diplomacy in the interwar years between the First and Second World Wars. It charts the convergence of the manufacture and trade of arms; diplomacy among the Great Powers and the domestic politics within them; the rise of national liberation and independence movements; and the burgeoning concept and early institutions of international counterterrorism. Key themes include: a transformation in meaning and practice of terrorism; the inability of Great Powers—namely, Great Britain, the United States, France—to harmonize perceptions of interest and the pursuit of common interests; the establishment of the tools and infrastructure of modern intelligence—including the U.S.-U.K. cooperation that would evolve into the Five Eyes intelligence alliance; and the nature of peacetime in the absence of major wars. Particular emphasis is given to British attempts to quell revolutionary nationalist movements in India and elsewhere in its empire, and to the Great Powers’ combined efforts to counter the activities of the Communist International. The facilitating roles of the Paris Peace Conference and League of Nations are explored here, in the context of the Arms Traffic Convention of 1919, the Arms Traffic Conference of 1925, and the 1937 Terrorism Convention.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document