The UN and Transnational Corporations: From Code of Conduct to Global Compact

Are transnational corporations (TNCs) and foreign direct investment beneficial or harmful to societies around the world? Since the birth of the United Nations more than 60 years ago, these questions have been major issues of interest and involvement for UN institutions. What have been the key ideas generated by the UN about TNCs and their relations with nation-states? How have these ideas evolved and what has been their impact? This book examines the history of UN engagement with TNCs, including the creation of the UN Commission and Centre on Transnational Corporations in 1974, the failed efforts of these bodies to craft a code of conduct to temper the revealed abuses of TNCs, and, with the advent of globalization in the 1980s, the evolution of a more cooperative relationship between TNCs and developing countries, resulting in the 1999 Global Compact.

Tagi Sagafi-nejad is the Radcliffe Killam Distinguished Professor of International Business and Director of the Ph.D. International Business Administration at Texas A&M International University, Laredo, Texas. He is author of Controlling International Technology Transfer: Issues, Perspectives, and Implications and Technology Exports from Developing Countries: The Case of Egypt.

John H. Dunning is Emeritus Professor of International Business at the University of Reading, UK, and State of New Jersey Emeritus Professor of International Business at Rutgers University. He has authored, co-authored, or edited 42 books on the economics of international direct investment and the multinational enterprise, and on industrial and regional economics.