The Multinational Corporation and Social Justice: Experiments in Supranational Governance

Abstract

The multinational corporation (MNC) is dichotomous in nature. While on the one hand it is a vehicle for private capital accumulation, when socially-embedded it may serve as a means to further social provisioning and social justice. A social economics approach to the MNC is developed to incorporate both private and social transaction costs in international production and trade where the divergence in these costs may require collective action to mitigate the effects of social dislocation. These issues are illustrated by experiments in corporate codes of conduct related to child labor and environmental sustainability. Since corporate codes may be insufficient to socially embed the activities of MNCs, efforts to develop supranational governance mechanisms to better achieve social justice are also considered.