Elite Attitudes Toward Multinational Firms: The Korean Experience

Abstract

This paper reports the survey results of the recently changing attitudes of the government and business elite groups toward multinational firms in Korea and investigates the major individual attribute determinants of these attitude changes. The elite groups of the public and private sectors in Korea, such as government officials and business leaders, were shown to have favorable attitudes toward multinational firms, in general for varying reasons. The estimation results based on the linear probability (OLS) model and the probit model showed that the most significant changes in attitudes toward multinational corporations in Korea are expected among the young business leaders working for small firms and the government officials at the low hierarchical level. This paper also discusses several policy implications of this study on the enhancement of the receptivity toward multinational firms and the host-country policies of foreign investment in Korea.