ECONOMIC NATURE OF MULTINATIONAL COMPANIES: FROM CLASSICAL THEORIES TO DIGITAL INTERNATIONALISATION

The article examines the economic nature of multinational companies (MNCs) and traces the evolution of theoretical concepts explaining their emergence, from the classical theories of the 1960s to contemporary approaches to digital internationalisation. The evolution of terminology applied to international firms is considered, together with the reasons behind the UNCTAD transition from the notion of transnational corporation to that of multinational enterprise in 2022. It is noted that the choice of the term transnational in United Nations documents of 1974 was driven largely by political and terminological considerations, whereas the official documents of the World Trade Organization and the European Union consistently employ the latter term. The definitions of MNCs proposed by leading foreign and Ukrainian scholars are analysed, and the criteria that distinguish such a company from other forms of international business are identified, namely control over assets located abroad, an equity threshold of ten per cent, and the coordination of production at the highest level of the decision-making hierarchy. The principal theories of MNCs are systematised in a summary table covering monopolistic advantage theory, product life cycle theory, the macroeconomic approach, internalisation theory, transaction cost theory, the Uppsala model, the eclectic OLI paradigm, regional theory, the theory of heterogeneous firms, the springboard perspective on emerging market companies, and microfoundational theory. A common idea uniting these approaches is identified: MNCs emerge and develop where the internal organisation of production and knowledge proves more efficient than market coordination mechanisms, and where firm-specific advantages are sufficient to offset the costs of internationalisation. It is substantiated that digital MNCs scale globally without foreign direct investment or physical assets, which calls into question the explanatory capacity of classical theories. Four channels through which MNCs affect the well-being of host regions are distinguished: economic, social, environmental and institutional.