Multinational Organization Development: A Social Architectural Perspective.

Abstract

The underlying premise of Heenan and Perlmutter's Multinational Organization Development is that in the currently emerging era of multilateral regulation models of transnational organization development must encompass the manifold interrelationships which exist between the multinational organization and the environment in which it operates. The central shortcoming common to traditional OD approaches, Heenan and Perlmutter observe, lies in their characteristic failure to describe adequately these critical interfaces. What is required now, in the author's opinion, is an expansion of focus, from a parochial concentration on multinatonal organizations taken singularly to an approach which acknowledges that multinational OD, means multiorganizational development with a worldwide perspective. Multinational organization development does not take place in a vacuum: these entities, of which the multinational corporation is the salient example, are both agents of change and objects of change.