Some Insights on the Changing Architecture of the World’s Top 100 Multinationals

Premise: globalization represents both the fertile background and the accountable foreground that accompanies the evolution of TNCs/MNEs, within a self-enforcing spiral of co-evolution which gratifies the winners and discards the losers.

Argument: UNCTAD’s Top 100 non-financial TNCs/MNEs gathers together, since 1993, some of the most prominent winners of the above mentioned processes, making this instrument one of the best indicators and benchmarks in terms of both globalization and transnationalization – when analyzed at a given moment in time (for a particular year), and even more relevant when analyzed dynamically and by comparison.

Context: two major global shifts have occurred during the last decade or so: the global (financial and) economic crisis and its repercussions, and the rise of the emerging economies and of their TNCs/MNEs.

Aim: to depict the dynamics registered within the world’s top 100 non-financial TNCs/MNEs – in order to identify significant insights on how the world of TNCs/MNEs has evolved and its architecture (and inner composition) has changed – by fueling the two shifts mentioned above while internalizing their outcomes.