Introduction

The Multinational Enterprise (MNE), by definition, performs value-adding activities in more than one country. Among the firm-specific ownership-advantages which permit the firm to operate competitively overseas, it is often argued by influential theories, are likely to be an existing technological strength and an established capability in regenerating such technical leadership. On this basis the juxtaposition of the definitional international dispersion of activity by MNEs, and the strongly hypothesised importance of Research and Development (R&D) at the core of the firm’s ability to create and sustain the distinctive competitive strengths which permit such global operations, ought surely to have stimulated a widespread practical and scholarly investigation of the potential for an effective internationalisation of R&D by MNEs. In fact the view that ‘the last activity of the firm to be organised on an international basis….is R&D’1 seems to have prevailed amongst business analysts in a manner that deterred the early development of formal analysis or documentation of such operations by economists.