The Contested Terrain of Globalization: Review and Conceptual Clarifications for Management Studies

The concept of globalization has become a shorthand for making sense of contemporary society. It reflects large-scale economic and social change, which affects people differently and evokes different viewpoints. Globalization is thus a highly contested concept and phenomenon. Contradictory and competing views, in turn, seem to be based on different interpretations of the present dominant forms of globalization, and of the material, economic, social and cultural conditions that these forms produce and give rise to. We view globalization not only as a significant set of economic, financial, social, political and cultural forces but as a powerful and contested discursive space. In this article, we present an overview of recent literature to introduce different thematic perspectives on globalization, to specify different ideological and discursive bases to approach globalization, and to place multinational corporations (MNC:s) within this context. Our account is not exhaustive, rather, it is intended as a basis for further discussion on the nature and role of multinational corporations in complex ”global” society