Many readers have been following the tragic events currently taking place in various countries in the Middle East. In this context, it is worthwhile thinking about what role business can play in promoting peace.
Galit Ailon (Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel) and Gideon Kunda (Tel-Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel). 2009. “‘The One-Company Approach’: Transnationalism in an Israeli-Palestinian Subsidiary of an MNC.” Organization Studies, 30(7): 693-712.
Abstract: This paper presents an ethnographic study of the Israeli—Palestinian subsidiary of a multinational hi-tech corporation. Critiquing the tendency of globalization theorists to conceptualize multinational corporations (MNCs) solely in terms of their impact on their external environment, this paper looks inward and examines the ideological and practical constituents of the transnational regime of consciousness as expressed through what management titles `the one-company approach’. We argue that this regime lays foundations for a transnational `imagined community’ which does not rival the national one, but internalizes it, creating an arena of discretionary power for managers: deciding when to activate and when to suppress nationality in the global organizational universe. This study analyzes the relationship between transnationalism and nationalism inside the organization, and its implications for understanding MNCs’ role in globalization.
*This paper won the EGOS (European Group for Organization Studies) Roland Calori Prize for the best paper published in Organization Studies between 2009-2010.
The Past Speaks 