Peng And Pleggenkuhle-Miles Critical Analysis

A Critical Review of Peng and Pleggenkuhle-Miles (2009) four main debates and whether the approach fully captures the complexity of the influences of globalization on global strategy

Introduction

The debate on globalization and how Multinational Companies (MNCs) interact with the new phenomenon has been ongoing for decades (Bhagwati, 2004; Brown, 1999). What, however, has become a consistent converging argument among scholars is that the aspect of globalization is both multidisciplinary and a phenomenon that is significantly influential in the business world and thus cannot be generally gainsaid. Further, the impact of globalization has been felt in how businesses operate and strategize both in its intensive and extensive sense. Consequently,

To effectively render this critical review, the paper begins by first presenting the general tenets of each debate and the highlighted criticism. It then presents other focus aspects that have not been exhaustively, in some cases, and not been touched on, in most cases, in the the four debates. The study will particularly use a multinational company, Croft Silicon, that deals in financial services in Kenya and how the four debates do not fully explain its situation in the market place, in a bid to fully illustrate and somewhat domesticate the study to a specific situation located in the researcher’s place of

Singh 2007 however has mentioned that culture has always been diminished to a micro perspective as opposed to the more desirable (among scholars) strategy which is looked at as a macro element in understanding the placement of MNCs in the world. That being said however, the general tenet of the Cultural vs Institutional distance dichotomy is the argument that MNCs operate within cultures and values and that they must always be cognizance of the various cultural proclivities in host nations if they are to survive; on the other hand, however, there is a renewed argument that MNCs work within the spectacle of institution-based worldview and institutional distance which argues that businesses apart from encompassing cultural distance also considers the legislative elements of the host country and the cognitive awareness of the business (Peng and Khoury 2008; Peng et al.