Internalization and the MNE: A Note on the Spread of Ideas

This paper examines the reasons for the impact of Buckley and Casson's The Future of the Multinational Enterprise (1976) on research in international business (IB). Earlier work concentrated on ownership-specific advantages or locational determinants rather than the central concept of internalization. The few exceptions were incomplete or not well known. Internalization as applied to the MNE spread rapidly because of the appeal to IB researchers of an analytically powerful idea that was based on institutional economics and involved an accessible methodology. The spread was also helped by the parallel growth of transaction costs in the domestic theory of the firm, and the publication activity of the authors and their associates.