Geoffrey Jones and Sabine Pitteloud eds., "The Cambridge Companion to the History of Multinationals and Society" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Summary

---

Podcast Summary:

New Books Network
Episode: Geoffrey Jones and Sabine Pitteloud eds., "The Cambridge Companion to the History of Multinationals and Society" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Host: Paula de la Cruz Fernandez
Guests: Professor Sabine Pitteloud & Professor Geoffrey (Geoff) Jones
Date: March 10, 2026

---

Episode Overview

This episode features editors Sabine Pitteloud and Geoffrey Jones discussing their new collective volume, The Cambridge Companion to the History of Multinationals and Society. The conversation explores the origins, challenges, and key insights of this ambitious work, which brings together 18 chapters from leading scholars to examine how multinational enterprises (MNEs) have shaped, and been shaped by, societies across history. The discussion addresses the book’s central themes, contributions to current debates about globalization, and the future directions in research on global business.

---

Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Backgrounds of the Editors

• Sabine Pitteloud: Assistant Professor at Uni Distance Suisse (Switzerland), focusing on the political/institutional role of multinationals and, currently, on business and environmental governance since the 1970s.
• Geoffrey Jones: Isadore Strauss Professor of Business History at Harvard Business School, with extensive research on the history, social, and ecological responsibilities of global business. Current project: Underdog Capitalism about business in the Global South.
  • [02:49–03:48]

2. Why This Book, Why Now?

• There have been 50 years of evolving scholarship since Mira Wilkins' foundational work on multinationals.
• The editors wanted to collect new, broader research—looking beyond firm strategies to how MNEs have influenced societies.
• Goal: To make nuanced historical research accessible, especially for non-specialists, focusing on the complex relationship between MNEs and society.
  • Quote (Jones):

    “So Sabine and I wanted to capture this new research and make it widely accessible, including to non specialists. And that's why we explicitly focus the volume on the theme of the relationship between multinationals and society.” [04:28]

3. Process and Challenges in Bringing the Book Together

• Identified pressing global challenges (inequality, climate change, geopolitics) to shape the book’s themes.
• Assembled a diverse group of scholars; most accepted invitations eagerly.
• Challenges:
  • Sparse historical literature on problematic aspects (e.g., corruption), requiring careful openness about what is known and unknown.
  • Navigating Eurocentric/US-centric tendencies given archival access; deliberate effort to include perspectives from Latin America, India, China, Africa, etc.
  • Did not strictly organize by region to prevent compartmentalizing global perspectives.
• Quote (Pitteloud):

  “We thought it must be really clear to state what we know about the topic and what we don't. So to be really honest about the shortcomings as well. The second challenge is also the global dimension of the topic.” [06:18]

4. Moving Past ‘Positive Impact’ Narratives

• Many business and international business studies have historically assumed that MNEs are inherently good, but ignored negative impacts.
• Business historians have brought nuance but sometimes miss key questions about labor, environment, and society (“the so what question”).
• The pendulum has swung from overly positive to sometimes seeing firms as uniformly exploitative; the editors aim for balance.
• Focus: How settings, policies, and institutions mediate outcomes—neither wholly good nor bad.
  • Quote (Jones):

    “...rather than see multinationals as either a solution or a problem, we focused on the conditions that shaped those outcomes. What kind of policies or institutional settings made their impact more positive or more negative, and for whom?” [09:52]

5. Why Study the History of Multinationals?

• History as a “user manual for the modern world.”
• Major companies have shaped not just products, but supply chains, labor, environment—our very lifestyles.
• Civics: MNEs often rival states in influence; historical knowledge fosters civic literacy and predictive power about future behaviors.
  • Quote (Jones):

    “Some multinationals have been more important than governments in some situations, maybe they still are. And I think it's important to understand how they've shaped events by studying their past…” [12:39]
    “History is a vast early warning system.” (Norman Cousins) [13:44]

6. Multinational Power: Lessons for Policy and Citizenship

• The global rules-based system was designed to support MNEs and their governments, not for broad fairness or morality.
• Multinationals act pragmatically, not always ethically—expecting them to self-regulate for the public good is unrealistic.
  • Quote (Pitteloud):

    “...we shouldn't be too naive about it. And the past is showing us that.” [15:39]

7. Controversial Topics and Contributions to Debate

• The book addresses corruption, dictatorship, tax avoidance—complicating overly simplistic pro- or anti-globalization narratives.
• Aim: Not “ammunition” for critics, but empirical foundation for a more informed, nuanced public debate about globalization’s winners and losers.
  • Quote (Jones):

    “...debates about globalization, about multinationals should be informed debates.” [17:18]

8. Structure and Examples: The “Waves of Globalization”

• Distinct historical “waves”:
  • High globalization before WWI, steep decline after, a resurgence post-1980, and now “stuttering.”
• Multinationals’ impacts look very different in different eras (e.g., environmental devastation in the “first global economy”; later greenwashing in the “second”).
  • Quote (Jones):

    “...you have a picture of different environmental impacts in different periods, but I'm afraid it's the same rather negative impact throughout.” [19:24–23:14]

9. Discontinuities in Globalization: The Case of China

• China’s experience: Early 20th-century multinational activity was halted by the Communist Revolution (1949) for decades; then a dramatic resurgence post-1980s reforms.
  • Quote (Jones):

    “So the story of China is one of huge story of discontinuity completely regarding multinationals.” [24:05]

10. What Is a Multinational, and What’s Next for Research?

• Not just size or a “big name”—any company owning and controlling assets abroad.
• The significance of “nationality” and sector (e.g., extractives vs. producers) needs careful consideration due to diverse impacts.
• The book pushes for broader approaches—beyond strategy and profit, toward social, political, and environmental issues.
  • Quote (Pitteloud):

    “...diversity really matters when it comes to addressing the impact of multinational companies.” [27:01]

11. Future Directions in the Field

• Editors hope the book encourages further broad, interdisciplinary study of MNEs.
• "Underdog Capitalism" (forthcoming from Jones) aims to flip the narrative on business in the Global South—focusing on success, not just “institutional voids.”
  • Quote (Jones):

    “Instead of writing a story of failure, I want to write a story of success about how entrepreneurs were able to build businesses in conditions quite different from Europe and the United States.” [32:28]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “History is a vast early warning system.” (Norman Cousins, cited by Jones, [13:44])
• “We wanted to capture this new research and make it widely accessible... focusing on the relationship between multinationals and society.” (Jones, [04:28])
• “We shouldn't be too naive about it. And the past is showing us that.” (Pitteloud, [15:39])
• “The debates about globalization, about multinationals should be informed debates.” (Jones, [17:18])

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 02:49–03:48 – Guest introductions, research backgrounds
• 04:28–05:45 – Origins and rationale for the book
• 06:18–09:18 – Challenges in assembling the volume, diversity and scope
• 09:52–12:08 – Balancing narratives: positive vs negative impacts
• 12:39–14:44 – The value of historical understanding of MNEs
• 15:39–16:49 – Multinational power and “rules-based” systems
• 17:18–18:49 – Book as a tool for informed debates on globalization
• 19:24–23:14 – Waves of globalization, environmental impact example
• 24:05–26:18 – Discontinuities and case of China
• 27:01–28:47 – Defining “multinational” and the importance of diversity
• 29:27–30:50 – Expanding the field: social, political, environmental topics
• 31:47–32:26, 32:28–34:08 – Future research directions

---

Conclusion

This episode provides a rich overview of The Cambridge Companion to the History of Multinationals and Society, placing the book at the forefront of a more complex, critical, and interdisciplinary understanding of MNEs in global history. The discussion encourages listeners (scholars and citizens alike) to move away from simplified judgments, understand the layered impacts of multinationals, and continue researching their multifaceted roles in our world.

---

Transcript

[Patient]

I get so many headaches every month.

[Paula de la Cruz Fernandez]

It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more.

[Patient]

Botox Onobotulinum toxin a prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for Those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions including als, Lou Gehrig's disease, Myasthenia gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome, and medications including botulinum toxins as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

[Paula de la Cruz Fernandez]

Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-844botox to learn more. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same Premium Wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities, so do

[Patient]

like I did and have one of

[Paula de la Cruz Fernandez]

your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today.

[Patient]

I'm told it's super easy to [e-mail]

[Paula de la Cruz Fernandez]

Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3

[Professor Sabine Piteloud]

month plan equivalent to $15 per month

[Paula de la Cruz Fernandez]

Required intro rate first 3 months only,

[Professor Sabine Piteloud]

then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra fee, full [e-mail] I

[Paula de la Cruz Fernandez]

was to become one of his wives.

[Professor Jeffrey Jones]

This week on Disorder, the podcast that orders the disorder, an Epstein survivor tells me her story and what justice looks like for her.

[Paula de la Cruz Fernandez]

I want to see action and I am demanding action. Do not just talk the talk, you need to start walking the walk now.

[Professor Jeffrey Jones]

It's one of the most powerful interviews I've ever done in over 20 years as a journalist. Search Disorder in your podcast app to listen right now.

[Paula de la Cruz Fernandez]

Welcome to the New Books Network. Hello and welcome to the New Books Network. I am Paula de la Cruz Fernandez, one of the hosts. I am here today to talk about the Cambridge Companion to the History of Multinationals and Society, published actually this month on February 2026 by Cambridge University Press. I'm here today with Professor Sabine Piteloud and Professor Jeffrey Jones who they are the editors of the volume. Before we start with the questions and talking about the book, can you please introduce yourselves? Where do you work, what's your research trajectory and what's your current research today?

[Professor Sabine Piteloud]

Hi everyone. I'm Sabine Pitlu. I'm an assistant professor at Uni Distances Suisse. It's based in the Alps in Switzerland in Brieg. My past research has focused on the political and institutional role of multinational companies. And now I'm currently leading a research project on how business have shaped environmental governance since the 1970s.

[Professor Jeffrey Jones]

Hello everybody. I'm Geoff Jones. I'm the Isadore Strauss professor of Business History at the Harvard Business School. I spent a long time researching the history of multinationals. More recently I've been concerned about the social and ecological responsibility of global business. And I'm just finishing another book called Underdog Capitalism, which is about the business history of the global south over the last hundred years.

[Paula de la Cruz Fernandez]

Thank you. So let's dive into the book. It's a long book or kind of very comprehensive, 18 chapters. Right. So let's talk a little bit more about the book's origins and challenges in the introduction. You know that it's been 50 years since Professor Mira Wilkinson pioneered the work on the history of multinationals. Why did you feel this was the right moment, perhaps for a companion for a big volume on the topic? And what gap were you trying to fill?

[Professor Jeffrey Jones]

I mean, it's true that the second volume of Mary Wilkins Foundational History of US multinationals was published half a century ago. Since then, the world in which multinationals operate has changed enormously. Think about 1974. We've got the Cold War between the west and the Soviet Union. China's locked into a very insular system and the mayhem of the Cultural Revolution. So the world has changed dramatically over the last 50 years. And just as the world changed dramatically, so there's been a surge of new research published on the history of multinationals. Mira Wilkins herself has done a lot of this research and she remains active to this day as a researcher. But it's also true that this researcher has investigated many issues beyond the original focus on the strategies of firms, especially on how multinationals impacted society in various ways. So Sabine and I wanted to capture this new research and make it widely accessible, including to non specialists. And that's why we explicitly focus the volume on the theme of the relationship between multinationals and society.

[Paula de la Cruz Fernandez]

Yeah, kind of going linking to that. I'm sure the process was not an easy process or to like kind of thinking about that moment when you start thinking, who should we invite right to. To write? And I'm very. I'm delighted to say that I was invited too, which was very important for me, and I. I feel honored. You know, what was the process of pulling this together? And, you know, there were. Were there any challenges or. Or issues that came up?

[Professor Sabine Piteloud]

Oh, there were some challenges. So first of all, we felt that to be meaningful, the book needed to engage with today most pressing challenges. This included inequalities, climate change, or geopolitical rivalries. The first step, therefore, was for us to ask simple questions. So, what are the most concerning trends today, for instance, and how are these trends connected to globalization and the role of multinational companies? And then once we had identified the main themes, we reached out to scholars who could bring their expertise on this topic. We were pretty lucky because almost every one of them said yes immediately. And then we had such a great group. And I must say that it was truly a collective effort to bring the book into being. Maybe I can say a few words also on the challenges. I think that we faced two main challenges along the way. The first one was that it's kind of difficult sometimes to document the most problematic aspects of multinational activity. Even the historical literature can be very scarce. And we have seen that, especially in the chapter on corruption. And so we thought it must be really clear to state what we know about the topic and what we don't. So to be really honest about the shortcomings as well. The second challenge is also the global dimension of the topic. So, of course, there is a strong tendency towards US and European narratives. We are not immune. Our scholarship is also produced in those academic contexts. Another issue is access to archives, especially in more unstable political settings. So it's a real constraint. But still, that being said, we made a real effort to move beyond this. We encourage, for instance, contributor to include perspectives outside Europe and the United States. And we have some chapters that engage directly with regions such as Latin America or countries such as India or China. But we also didn't want it to compartmentalize too much and to have a geographic organization. So although we have this chapter on China, for instance, Chinese enterprises also feature in many other chapters. For instance, we do not have a chapter, especially on the African continent, but we do have some part of other chapters that focus specifically on cases in African countries. So we have studied a global phenomenon and we needed to reflect that in the book. But it was challenging.

[Paula de la Cruz Fernandez]

Wonderful. You also say that much research on multinationals has also followed this linear upward trajectory, right? Kind of talking about the Positive impact on the world. I feel there is a pushback to that in the book. But also, is it all negative, or what's kind of the broad conclusion about the impact of multinationals in society over time?

[Professor Jeffrey Jones]

I think the discipline of international business in particular has had an issue, assuming that the growth of multinationals was always a positive thing and not really asking questions about impact beyond sometimes their role in technology transfer. There's also been a tendency to dismiss criticism by pointing to an overall positive impact based on aggregate data, while not really engaging with quite a lot of evidence about problematic individual cases and situations where people were left worse off. I think business history research has always been more nuanced, but it must be said that a lot of researchers also sought to explain the growth of firms across borders without really asking the so what question. There's been a particular tendency to leave some things out, like the impact of workers on workers or the impact on the environment, which has tended to be left to labor historians or environmental historians in those cases. I think it is true that in some ways the pendulum has gone in completely the opposite direction. And more recently, particularly under the influence of the history of capitalism, research in the United States, which broadly sees all firms as bad actors in the world. So Sabine and I actually wanted to encourage a more balanced approach. So rather than see multinationals as either a solution or a problem, we focused on the conditions that shaped those outcomes. What kind of policies or institutional settings made their impact more positive or more negative, and for whom? And I think in our introductory chapter, we tried to sum this up with the sentence that the impact of multinationals was a complex mixture of positive and negative factors.

[Paula de la Cruz Fernandez]

Thank you. Yeah, and we can go into the chapters a bit more now. And I wonder if you mentioned business historians. I think it's really kind of a responsibility. Why should we care about the history behind all of the companies that the chapters mentioned and all of the different countries? What does history tell us about the role of multinationals in society?

[Professor Jeffrey Jones]

What does it tell us and why should we care about it? I mean, those are the two big questions, right? Well, I mean, I have a philosophical position on history in general. I see it as a kind of user manual for the modern world. It's partly a question of past dependency. So I think in the book we mentioned Ikea and Apple, and we can think about them as just brands, but history shows clearly that that's a little bit of a narrow view about these corporations. Broadly, their history explains why our world looked the way it does now. And that's because decisions these companies made, they didn't just invent products, they made decisions about supply chains, labor practices, all those sort of things. So they're shapers of our lifestyle, if you like. Now, why does that matter? I think it's partly a matter of civic literacy. Some multinationals have been more important than governments in some situations, maybe they still are. And I think it's important to understand how they've shaped events by studying their past, how they've handled crises, environmental impacts, labor disputes. I think we're in a better position to predict how they will behave in the future. If you think again, philosophically, it moves us from being passive consumers to informed citizens. So one of my favorite quotes, which I always use in my MBA class, actually, about the importance of history is by the journalist Norman Cousins, who wrote history is a vast early warning system. And I think that encourages us to understand that we don't just study the past to memorize dates, but to recognize the recurring patterns that lead either to catastrophe or to success.

[Paula de la Cruz Fernandez]

Yeah. Multinationals are corporations. Based on this book and what we know, they're clearly powerful and they have been in history. Right. So. And like you say, we often see evidence of this in our daily lives, from global brands visible everywhere, right from Spain to India, to news about their political contributions or adoption of green policies. But your book goes beyond what we see and how the power that multinationals have, how it extends in shaping transnational economies, cultures, politics. Can you point to some examples in the book about what lessons to policymakers and citizens, as you say, can these examples give?

[Professor Sabine Piteloud]

I think that what's interesting when we take the various contributions of the book together is that we clearly see that what we call this rule based international orders, you know, all those trade agreements, the international law, international organization, it wasn't really about fairness or morality. It was more like a safety net designed to make life predictable for multinational companies and also the government that backed them in Europe, the United States and Japan. Above all, and historically, it's also very clear that multinationals often acted in a pragmatic and opportunistic manner. And so when we look at the situation today, it's probably unrealistic to expect multinationals to stay politically neutral or to stick to ethical rules if following them do not benefit their bottom line. So I think we shouldn't be too naive about it. And the past is showing us that.

[Paula de la Cruz Fernandez]

Yeah, absolutely. And several chapters, for example, deal with multinationals and dictatorship, corruption, tax avoidance, topics that are controversial. And do you see this book, for example, kind of providing historical Ammunition for those critics of globalization or probably, you know, or it's more, you know, this is a complicated picture. We should at least know about it.

[Professor Jeffrey Jones]

Well, I think the important thing is that debates about globalization, about multinationals should be informed debates. And I think what we're doing, say, with this book is putting a lot of, I think a lot of the very best scholarship out there in a very accessible form. And I think Sabine and I hope that by doing that we can contribute to having a more informed debate about winners and losers in globalization. And it is a big issue, and there are both winners and losers, and they should be discussed rather than just assumptions of one or the other. I think. And I think that's probably our main contribution.

[Professor Sabine Piteloud]

I guess it's also one of the merits of the business history scholarship is that we go beyond aggregate data that can show overall positive impact on growth and so on to, as Jeff just mentioned, consider the losers. But also we go beyond sometimes this tendency to just pick the bad apples and look at the problematic case, to consider various cases across the globe at various time periods. So, yeah, let's hope it's going to help to have some more empirical evidence on the current issue.

[Paula de la Cruz Fernandez]

In the introduction you have this graph, the rise with the waves of globalization. Perhaps you can point to different chapters. What I want is to mention some of the chapters and some of the authors as well. So I was thinking maybe we could try to talk about some examples of the kind of earlier, the first wave of globalization and some of the chapters that talk about it.

[Professor Jeffrey Jones]

I can say something about the waves. So the organizing principle, if you like, of the book, which Sabine and I lay out in the opening chapter, is that there have been very distinct waves of globalization, which is a fact which most business historians are now very familiar with. But the companion series is meant to reach people who are not specialists and maybe less familiar with that. So we have this cool graph showing waves of globalization. And I mean, the bottom line is that the world globalized, like completely crazy before World War I, on a scale never seen before then it completely de globalized. And globalization remained very subdued, really, until well after World War II. And then from the 1980s, it shot up again. And now we see in the last 10 years, the process, I don't know what to use the word, is stuttering. And Sabine and I speculate that we can see both considerable de globalization and some evidence of continuing globalization. So it's a very mixed picture, and I think all our authors very kindly mention this and how it impacts what they're looking at, and I think that's important because globalization, multinational activity looked different in different periods. I'll give just one example of the chapter I wrote on the environment with Anne Christian Berquist. There. We have a picture in the first global economy of really massive environmental devastation inflicted on the global South. And that was because the rich world, the industrialized world, wanted food, they wanted raw materials, they wanted minerals. And multinationals went out to Africa, Latin America, Asia, and blew up mountains, destroyed the natural environment, created monocultures of crops where there had been great diversity. And they did that partly because in the world at that time, the west was very confident, it was very superior and other people didn't matter. And also because these people had limited knowledge of climate change or other environmental consequences. So even if they did care, they didn't know what to care about. So if you contrast that with the second global economy from the 1980s, here you have multinationals publishing sustainability reports, talking about how they're protecting the environment and other things too. But we have another, I think, very important phenomenon, which is greenwashing. So we've lived in a world of the last 30 years where corporations have claimed to be improving the environment. And yet when you dig down on what actually is going on in particular situations, you still have continuing environmental devastation, including, and maybe especially in countries with weak governance structures like in Africa. So you have a picture of different environmental impacts in different periods, but I'm afraid it's the same rather negative impact throughout.

[Paula de la Cruz Fernandez]

Yeah, no, this is very interesting because we're talking about, well, almost two centuries of history. So one of the books recurring themes seems also to be this discontinuity, right? It goes up and down, up and down of this globalization waves. And what it shows is also that globalization, excuse me, isn't a smooth kind of inevitable process. What historical moments or episodes best illustrate, do you think, how multinational expansion can be suddenly changed or reshaped and perhaps mention some of the chapters or examples in the book.

[Professor Jeffrey Jones]

Well, you have a striking example in our chapter on China by Adam and Zhang Frost. So they show that in the first global economy, Chinese companies, where modern Chinese companies were beginning to grow and to grow over borders, and they seem to be on an upward trajectory to follow the pattern set in the West, 1949, there's the communist revolution and that completely goes away. Chinese companies don't invest abroad. And it's the same if you look at inward investment in China. There's quite a lot, a lot of actually of inward multinational investments in China before 1949. And then they're all wiped out completely. And for the next 30 years nobody invests in China and Chinese firms don't invest abroad. Then we have the reform period of Deng Xiangping beginning in the late 70s and 80s and 90s. And it's dramatic change again. First of all, I mean, Deng sees the need for modernization and he sees the need for foreign companies, multinational companies to be involved in that. So we have a huge amount of inward foreign investment into China, usually in the form as the government mandated joint ventures. But without doubt this multinational investment was very important for the first stage of China's modernization and outward. Suddenly Chinese companies start investing abroad again, first slowly in limited state owned companies and then much more rapidly from the 2000s. And we've seen a period of Chinese multinationals a approaching the technological frontier of key industries and secondly using that advantage to expand all over the world, where they are enabled to expand and exercise an enormous influence. So the story of China is one of huge story of discontinuity completely regarding multinationals.

[Paula de la Cruz Fernandez]

Wonderful. To start wrapping up the interview, I wanted to talk about kind of the concept of the multinational. Right. We start with Mira Wilkins has does this book propose or should we think about the multinational corporation in a different way today? After this book then international business historians were thinking about it and in what ways then we're thinking about it in the 70s and 80s and in what ways is different today. And for future research on the multinational corporation, what should we be considering?

[Professor Sabine Piteloud]

So of course we could have a basic definition of what is a multinational that will be a company that owns and control assets abroad more than in one country. We usually have in mind large corporation, big names, Unilever, Apple and so on. But it's really not just about size. So we can have firms of all kinds that have operated across borders for a long time. And I guess in this respect one of the key takeaway from the book is that diversity really matters when it comes to addressing the impact of multinational companies. For instance, multinationals are often assigned a nationality. It can depend on the location of their headquarters, on the nationality of their shareholders. And this matters because this, like perceived nationality or legal nationality, can lead government to treat multinationals very differently. We can also think about multinationals from different sectors. This obviously matters a lot as well regarding their attitudes towards regulations of various types and for instance also different impact on the environment. If you have in mind, for instance, extractive industries, those operate very differently from enterprises which are producing goods. So it's not the same impact at all. And we should keep this diversity in mind. And I think the book is really about that as well.

[Paula de la Cruz Fernandez]

Yeah, absolutely. It kind of brings up the importance also of all different parts of the multinational or business, like marketing, production, like Jeff was saying then relations with politics. Were there any topics or elements that you wish you had, you know, included? Or maybe we just will see another book in three, three years that will include the topics that you wanted to. I mean, that you think, well, maybe we should have written about this as well.

[Professor Jeffrey Jones]

I mean, I think we have attempted to broaden the canvas of how people study of multinationals so, you know, by having chapters on gender, you know, written by you, chapters on taxation written by Boris Gellen and Christian Marx and many others. I think we're trying to send a message that the study of multinationals shouldn't be a narrow one focused just on firm strategy and studying how they invest in one country or another, but should be a very broad one considering a range of political and social and other issues where multinationals are frankly extremely important in shaping the modern world. So I think Sabine and I are hoping that by making this statement, we will encourage a new generation of research which explores other. Explores these topics more and continues to widen the domain. And if there are more books coming out on broader issues, I think, and not necessarily by us, or indeed likely to be by us, I. I think we'll think we'd have succeeded in our mission.

[Paula de la Cruz Fernandez]

Yeah, absolutely. I'm wondering what Mira Wilkins will say when she reads the entire volume. But also there was one comment on LinkedIn a few days ago that was about the importance of this kind of broad, big volumes with broad term, with broad issues for other disciplines. Right. So that's also very important that business historians also start going out in those fields. I'm going to ask you if you want to say a little bit about your future research, if there is any. You already mentioned something at the beginning about YouTube books, but just to wrap up the interview, what's your next project?

[Professor Sabine Piteloud]

So I have this current research project on environmental governance. So for me it was like the natural evolution from my previous research to understand how MNEs have shaped regulation and also how this regulation sometimes conflicted with trade rules. So it's about these global architectures of governance. Right. And so this is a huge topic and it's probably going to keep me busy for the next couple of years anyway.

[Paula de la Cruz Fernandez]

Yeah, wonderful.

[Professor Jeffrey Jones]

I have the same problem as Sabine are huge topics. So my next book, as I think I mentioned earlier, was going to be called Underdog Capitalism, which looks at how locally owned firms developed in Africa, Asia and Latin America over the last hundred years. And it's a little bit designed to flip the narrative. So much literature on these countries. Business in these countries is a literature focused on failure. Why didn't they become like United States or Europe? What were the problems? What were the institutional voids that these firms faced? So instead of writing a story of failure, I want to write a story of success about how entrepreneurs were able to build businesses in conditions quite different from Europe and the United States. And instead of talking about institutional voids, I want to talk about aspects of institutions which wear advantages as people sought to build businesses. And I think that's been important throughout the last hundred years. And I think it's very important in understanding how China has grown so rapidly in the last two or three decades. While conventionally people are still obsessed about talking about various institutional voids in China, I think there are distinct institutional advantages which explain the success of their companies. So that's.

[Paula de la Cruz Fernandez]

Thank you. Yeah, no, that's great. I look forward to know more about both of your publications. Thank you so much. It has been a pleasure to interview you, to know more about kind of what goes behind scenes when writing a big volume like the Cambridge Companion to the History of Multinationals and Society. My name is Paula Dera Cruz Fernandez and I have been your host in this interview for the New Books Network.

[Professor Sabine Piteloud]

It.