The Internationalization of the Firm and the Multinational Enterprise: a Contemporary Conceptual Review

Abstract

The growing phenomenon of globalization is generating a new and more complex economic environment. It influence in the management of companies, which has to introduced new variables of management. Therefore it implies to redefine some terms and concepts that seems to be sufficiently consolidated in the science of the economy. They are numerous problems for delimiting ancient concepts in actual environment. From this perspective, we will define an updated concept of internationalization and multinational company. Both of them are complex and, sometimes, ambiguous phenomenon with a high grade of heterogeneity, so they are difficult to define. To resolve the problem, we will propose a new terminology to enumerate the variety of implantations or foreign branches.Internationalization, Multinational Company, Foreign Direct Investment, Foreign Implantations.