The Key Literature on IB Activities: 1960–2000

Abstract The main thrust and content are considered of two influential strands of the international business (IB) literature. The first examines the development of scholarly thought on the determinants of ownership, sectoral pattern, and the geographical scope of multinational enterprise (MNE) activity. The second examines the main changes in the external—technological, economic, and political—environment that have helped to fashion these explanations. These strands are reviewed in two separate sections of the chapter, each of which considers three main time periods: the 1960s to the mid‐1970s, the mid‐1970s to the late 1980s, and the late 1980s to the turn of the twentieth century.