Transnationality Index
Encyclopedia
| Company | Home country | Industry | Percent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Xstrata Xstrata Xstrata plc is a global mining company headquartered in Zug, Switzerland and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is a major producer of coal , copper, nickel, primary vanadium and zinc and the world's largest producer of ferrochrome... |
United Kingdom | Mining & quarrying | 93.2 |
| ABB Ltd. | Switzerland | Engineering services | 90.4 |
| Nokia Nokia Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational communications corporation that is headquartered in Keilaniemi, Espoo, a city neighbouring Finland's capital Helsinki... |
Finland | Electrical & electronic equipment | 90.3 |
| Pernod Ricard SA | France | Food, beverages and tobacco | 89.1 |
| WPP Group WPP Group WPP plc is a global media communications services company with its main management office in London, United Kingdom and its executive office in Dublin, Ireland. It is the world's largest advertising group by revenues, and employs over 150,000 people in 2,400 offices in 107 countries... |
United Kingdom | Business services | 88.9 |
| Vodafone Group Plc | United Kingdom | Telecommunications | 88.6 |
| Linde AG | Germany | Chemicals | 88.3 |
| Anheuser-Busch InBev Anheuser-Busch InBev Anheuser-Busch InBev N.V. is a Belgian-Brazilian publicly-traded company, based in Leuven, Belgium. It is the largest global brewer with nearly 25% global market share and one of the world's top five consumer products companies by EBITA.... |
Netherlands | Food, beverages and tobacco | 87.9 |
| Anglo American | United Kingdom | Mining & quarrying | 87.5 |
| ArcelorMittal | Luxembourg | Metal and metal products | 87.2 |
The Transnationality Index (TNI) is a means of ranking multinational corporation
Multinational corporation
A multi national corporation or enterprise , is a corporation or an enterprise that manages production or delivers services in more than one country. It can also be referred to as an international corporation...
s that is employed by economists and politicians. It is calculated as the arithmetic mean
Arithmetic mean
In mathematics and statistics, the arithmetic mean, often referred to as simply the mean or average when the context is clear, is a method to derive the central tendency of a sample space...
of the following three ratio
Ratio
In mathematics, a ratio is a relationship between two numbers of the same kind , usually expressed as "a to b" or a:b, sometimes expressed arithmetically as a dimensionless quotient of the two which explicitly indicates how many times the first number contains the second In mathematics, a ratio is...
s (where "foreign" means outside of the corporation's home country):
- the ratio of foreign assets to total assets
- the ratio of foreign sales to total sales
- the ratio of foreign employment to total employment
The Transnationality Index was developed by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development was established in 1964 as a permanent intergovernmental body. It is the principal organ of the United Nations General Assembly dealing with trade, investment, and development issues....
.
Multinational corporations are also ranked by the amount of foreign assets that they own. However, the TNI ranking can differ markedly from this. For example, as of 2000, General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
was the second largest multinational corporation in terms of foreign assert ownership. However, it ranked only 73rd by the TNI, with an index of only 40%. Although the company had large investments outside of the United States, most of its sales, employment, and assets were within the U.S.. In contrast, Exxon
ExxonMobil
Exxon Mobil Corporation or ExxonMobil, is an American multinational oil and gas corporation. It is a direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil company, and was formed on November 30, 1999, by the merger of Exxon and Mobil. Its headquarters are in Irving, Texas...
has a TNI of 68% and Vodafone
Vodafone
Vodafone Group Plc is a global telecommunications company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the world's largest mobile telecommunications company measured by revenues and the world's second-largest measured by subscribers , with around 341 million proportionate subscribers as of...
has a TNI of 81%. As of 2001, General Electric ranked 75th, with a TNI of 36.7%. The 14 most transnational corporations originated in small countries (Switzerland, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada), whereas the largest multinational corporations in terms of foreign asset ownership all had low TNI scores. General Motors
General Motors
General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...
, the fourth largest multinational corporation in terms of foreign asset ownership only ranked 83rd (30.7%) on the TNI top 100. IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
ranked 50th (53.7%), Volkswagen
Volkswagen
Volkswagen is a German automobile manufacturer and is the original and biggest-selling marque of the Volkswagen Group, which now also owns the Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, SEAT, and Škoda marques and the truck manufacturer Scania.Volkswagen means "people's car" in German, where it is...
ranked 45th (55.7%), and Toyota, the sixth largest multinational corporation in terms of foreign asset ownership, only ranked 82nd (30.9%) on the broader TNI scale.
Peter Dicken, an honorary fellow of the School of Environment and Development at the University of Manchester
University of Manchester
The University of Manchester is a public research university located in Manchester, United Kingdom. It is a "red brick" university and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive British universities and the N8 Group...
, argues that TNI data refute the assertions of hyperglobalism. The data, he argues, prove false the claim that multinational corporations are "inexorably, and inevitably, abandoning their ties to their country of origin". If that were the case, we would expect the largest multinational corporations to have the majority of their assets, sales, and employmnent outside of their countries of origin, and thus the majority of those corporations to have high TNIs. In fact, in the UNCTAD TNI data for the top 100 multinational corporations for 2001, the mean TNI is 52.6%, 57 of the 100 have a TNI greater than 50%, and only a mere 16 have a TNI greater than 75%. Thus, he concludes, measured TNI data provide little evidence for multinational corporations having the proportions of their assets, sales, and employees outside of their home countries that one would expect for truly global firms.