Effect of Foreign Investments on Ethical Outcomes in Developing Countries

Multinational corporations are playing a pivotal role in shaping the socio-economic development of developing countries. This paper explores how knowledge acquisition in African subsidiaries can generate important social value. We use an integrated perspective of social network theory with regression analysis, and capability approach to examine the role of individuals’ social networks on their knowledge. We introduce skill improvement as an alternative measure of knowledge gain and extend the explanatory capacity of social network theory by applying the concept of network centrality to analyzing individual-level knowledge gain. The analysis is based on survey data gathered from individuals across eight multinational subsidiaries in Africa.