The Strategic Role of Foreign Plants in International Manufacturing Networks

The purpose of this paper is to find out the limitations of existing literature and future research questions by reviewing literature focusing on the strategic role of foreign plants. It was pointed out that very few works focus on the evolution of foreign plants and the process of internationalization in emerging market multinationals. In future, attention needs to focus on the following research questions: identifying the evolution process of the strategic role of foreign plants in multinational corporations; identifying the changing role of foreign plants as they influence other plants and at the same time are affected by others; discussing collaboration and interaction among plants in manufacturing networks; and discussing the role of global headquarters, which might fulfill an important function in rearranging plants’ roles to fit their development and providing an environment and system to encourage collaboration and interaction among plants.