Inside the World – Class Multinationals: A Sectoral Frame

Background. A firm, as it develops, tends to overcome local, regional, and national business environment boundaries by expanding into global economic space. The intense dynamics of internationalization, the expansion of multinational companies from emerging economies, the presence of multinational companies owned by the state are just a few of the specificities that shape the global business environment today. In the literature, these trends have become challenging topics, both open to criticism and appreciation.

Aims and approach. In this study we aim to map the expansion of business in the international environment from a sectoral perspective. In this respect, using the data synthesized by UNCTAD in the World's Top 100 non-financial MNEs and Top 100 non-financial MNEs from developing and transition economies, we aggregated, for each sector, the main performance indicators (assets, sales and employment) which reflects the magnitude of the expansion of the activity of the companies included in these ranks outside the economic area of origin. Also, based on the algorithm for calculating the Transnationality Index, we have calculated an aggregate Sectoral Transnationality Index for each of the two tops.

Conclusions. The analysis carried out leads to a series of conclusions regarding the dynamics and configuration of the universe of the world's most prominent multinational companies. Although this is mainly an exploratory research, we appreciate that this sectoral approach leads to a deeper level of analysis, expanding the area of knowledge in the field and, at the same time, creating a framework for new investigative perspectives.