Strategic Bridging: A Role for the Multinational Corporation in Third World Development

The traditional lending paradigms adopted by international development funding agencies have not been very successful in fostering genuine economic development at the grassroots level in developing Third World countries. Despite good intentions on the part of these multilateral agencies, they sometimes lack perspectives on the unique social, cultural, and ecological conditions affecting development in these countries. Multinational corporations with a more permanent presence and long-term commitment of resources in these countries have egoistic interests in long-term relationship building with stakeholders in host Third World countries. They can provide collaborative mechanisms for partnering international development funding agencies to foster grassroots development efforts in developing countries. Collaboration theory and the concept of strategic bridging as a unique form of collaboration are used as frameworks to analyze a case study involving the role of a multinational firm as an unofficial strategic bridge between an international development bank and a state government in a West African country to bring about a successful outcome to an infrastructural funds lending exercise.

[1]  R. N. Kanungo,et al.  Management in developing countries , 1993 .

[2]  Martin Kilduff,et al.  Performance and Interaction Routines in Multinational Corporation , 1992 .

[3]  L. D. Brown,et al.  Bridging Organizations and Sustainable Development , 1991 .

[4]  D. Leonard.  African Successes: Four Public Managers of Kenyan Rural Development , 1991 .

[5]  Harrie Vredenburg,et al.  Strategic Bridging: The Collaboration between Environmentalists and Business in the Marketing of Green Products , 1991 .

[6]  Michael E. Porter,et al.  The Competitive Advantage of Nations. , 1990 .

[7]  H. Marcussen,et al.  Industrialization in the Third World : the need for alternative strategies , 1990 .

[8]  Barbara Gray,et al.  Collaborating: Finding Common Ground for Multiparty Problems , 1989 .

[9]  R. Bates.  Beyond the Miracle of the Market: The Political Economy of Agrarian Development in Kenya , 1989 .

[10]  R. Bates.  Toward a political economy of development : a rational choice perspective , 1988 .

[11]  Henry Mintzberg,et al.  Of strategies, deliberate and emergent , 1985, Strategic Management Journal.

[12]  M. Porter.  Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance , 1985 .

[13]  M. Kiggundu.  Administrative Theory and Practice in Developing Countries: A Synthesis. , 1983 .

[14]  Andrew Moemeke.  Socio-Cultural Environment of Communication in Traditional Nigeria: An Ethnographie Exploration. , 1983 .

[15]  E. Rogers,et al.  Diffusion of Innovations , 1964 .