New Books Network Geoffrey Jones and Sabine Pitteloud eds., "The Cambridge Companion to the History of Multinationals and Society" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Mar 10, 2026
Geoffrey (Jeff) Jones, Isidore Strauss Professor of Business History at Harvard, co-edits a wide-ranging Companion on multinationals. They explore how global firms shaped trade, politics, and regulation. Short takes cover corruption, taxation, environmental costs, China’s break and reform, and why business history matters for today’s policy debates.
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Companion Reframes Multinationals Around Society
- The book reframes multinational history around their societal impacts rather than just firm strategy.
- Geoffrey Jones and Sabine Pitteloud aimed to capture new research linking multinationals to politics, environment, and inequality since Wilkins' work.
Build Anthologies Around Today's Big Risks
- Target chapters to pressing problems like climate change, inequality, and geopolitics and recruit specialists for each theme.
- Editors invited experts across topics and encouraged contributors to include perspectives beyond Europe and the U.S.
Impact Depends On Institutions Not Size
- The book rejects simple pro- or anti-multinational narratives and asks which institutions shape positive or negative outcomes.
- Editors emphasize conditional impacts: policies and institutional settings determine winners and losers.
