Politics, power and the self-preserving MNE: theoretical reflections on “Rules or no rules: international business in the time of Trump”

There is an increasing discontent with mainstream international business (IB) theory. For instance, it has been claimed that it is unable to address today’s environmental crisis and rising global uncertainty and nationalism. The conventional OLI thinking, in which multinational enterprises (MNEs) create value by combining firm-specific advantages with country-specific advantages, usually fails to take into account or ignore negative externalities that often occur in host countries (Kolk, 2016; Yu et al., 2023; Bansal et al., 2024; Foss and Klein, 2025 and Kano et al., 2025).

The criticism against IB theory mainly concerns how the MNE is conceptualized in terms of its main goals and how it interacts with its environment. However, contemporary IB theory does not offer a single, unified view of what MNEs do or why. In fact, it includes many different “tales,” ranging from Hymer’s concern with MNEs’ exploitation of monopoly rents to their ability to reduce transaction costs, create value by combining and transferring various resources, build networks across borders or excel at managing institutional differences globally (Forsgren, 2024).

However, it is probably fair to say that the view of the MNE as a cost-efficient and value-creating organization, in which the main driver is maximizing profit, has been a dominant conceptualization of the MNE in IB theory over the past four to five decades. This view is manifested in different approaches that build on Transaction Cost Economics, Internalization and Resource-Based View. These theories have an unmistakable flavor of viewing the MNE as a supreme organization (Forsgren and Yamin, 2023). The overall critique of IB theory, therefore, at least implicitly, seems to focus on these “tales” rather than on other parts of IB theory.

A recent example advocating for more relevant IB theory is the article “Rules or no rules: International Business in the Time of Trump” by Burmester et al. (2026) in this journal. This call is motivated by the current era of nationalist discourse, protectionist trade policies and skepticism of supranational institutions. While IB research has long acknowledged the role of politics in MNEs’ strategic behavior, the current situation, often called Trumpism, highlights politicization processes more clearly and urges IB scholars to expand their theorizing on the role of MNEs in these processes.

The “Rules or no rules” article (Burmester et al., 2026) consists of four separate contributions. The first examines protectionist trade policies and the role of MNEs in these policies. It stresses that tariff policies, especially as implemented by the Trump administration, are as much symbolic acts as economic tools. The author(s) suggest that an MNE’s political activity should involve efforts to participate in the meaning-making process through which tariffs are justified or challenged.

The second contribution takes the host country perspective, in this case Ireland, rather than the MNE perspective. It emphasizes that inward investments do not only imply the transfer of resources but also the transfer of political ideology. The fact that Ireland’s economy is highly dependent on US MNEs’ foreign direct investment implies that it will also be indirectly involved in Washington’s political agenda through the MNE subsidiaries in the country. This contagion effect results in a dramatic increase in uncertainty and a structural precarity of Ireland’s (and similar countries’) economic development model.

In the third contribution, it is maintained that Trumpism disrupts the logic behind the OLI framework. Ownership advantage is undermined by increased nationalism and foreign direct investment (FDI) barriers, location advantage becomes much more volatile due to sudden changes in trade policy, and internalization advantage is weakened by MNEs developing partnerships with local firms for political reasons rather than transaction cost reasons. Simply speaking, the OLI framework needs to include not only economic factors but also institutions and politics. Furthermore, it is argued that liability of foreignness, a central concept in IB theory, must be reconceptualized so that it also includes geopolitical liability referring to risks, constraints and reputational burdens that MNEs face abroad.

The fourth contribution is, by far, the most provoking one. It turns Hymer’s old concept of foreignness as a barrier for FDI upside-down by simply asking: “Why should an MNE not seek to acquire advantage over rivals by imposing foreignness on them?” By political strategy, MNEs can manipulate the attribution of foreignness to a rival or alter the consequences of foreignness. This reasoning is also more or less explicitly based on the assumption that MNEs are themselves hierarchic and autocratic systems for which foreignness rather than human rights is the natural imperative. This is provocative reading for the many IB scholars who base their reasoning on Transaction Cost Economics and Internalization theory, for which the MNE as a hierarchy is more or less a prerequisite!

All contributions raise important and intriguing questions regarding the need for a more relevant IB theory. We agree with the overall conclusion in the contributions that mainstream IB theory lacks a perspective that puts the MNE as a political actor more at the center of the analysis.

However, the contributions are quite vague when it comes to articulating in what particular way today’s IB theory lacks tools to analyze the MNE as a political actor. In total, the paper’s main message, at least implicitly, seems to be that there is an increasing gap between the real world, in terms of geopolitics and contemporary multinationals, and the analytical tools that mainstream IB theory offers. However, how politics and power should affect IB theory is more indicated than analyzed in the paper. For instance, it is maintained that Trumpism disrupts the logic behind the OLI framework. Ownership advantage is undermined by rising nationalism and FDI barriers; location advantage becomes much more volatile due to sudden changes in trade policy; and internalization advantage is weakened as MNEs form partnerships with local firms for political rather than transaction-cost reasons. It is argued that the OLI framework needs to include not only economic factors but also institutions and politics. Furthermore, it is argued that liability of foreignness, a central concept in IB theory, must be reconceptualized to include geopolitical liability, referring to risks, constraints and reputational burdens that MNEs face abroad.

However, it is not demonstrated how Trumpism disrupts the logic behind each component of the OLI framework. It rather suggests that the framework emphasizes too many economic factors and too few political factors, which is quite another matter than demonstrating its fallacy. The same goes for liability of foreignness versus geopolitical liability. It is quite common in conventional IB theory to include different aspects of political risks, not only business risks, in the concept of liability as a barrier to foreign investments (Zhou and Guillen, 2018).

The fourth contribution is more straightforward. It seems, at least implicitly, to suggest that most of mainstream IB theory is ready for the waste paper bin. It is claimed that it is time for IB scholars to admit that the study of MNEs was established from the assumption that they are technologically and morally superior, and that they do good for the rest of the world (for a recent example, see Cuervo-Cazurra et al., 2026). This is quite much in line with how the MNE is conceptualized in theories like Transaction Cost Economics/Internalization, Evolutionary Theory and Dynamic Capability Theory.

To summarize, the article (Burmester et al. (2026) raises some important issues and potential weaknesses of mainstream IB theory in an era of Trumpism, but it does not specify how the theory should be affected by a more political view of the MNE. It only suggests that it should be affected in some way. While the authors advocate for a more political outlook on multinationals, it often seems that such a call primarily implies a greater ability of MNEs to adapt to a changing political environment rather than their capacity to shape it. It is also somewhat paradoxical that, although politics is closely linked to power, the concept of power is only mentioned a handful of times in the paper.

Inspired by the paper above, especially the fourth contribution, we will take the first step toward an IB theory that more strongly puts the MNE as a political and powerful actor at the center of the analysis.

It is clear from the contributions in the “Rules or no rules” article (Burmester et al., 2026) that the MNE is intrinsically political, behaving as a political actor that not only reacts to its political environment but is “notoriously proactive” in shaping it (Forsgren, 2024: 138). A political theory of the MNE is therefore necessary to understand how “political environments themselves are actively constructed, contested and transformed through processes of politicization in which MNEs, firms, states and other actors are mutually implicated” (Burmester et al., 2026). How, then, may we conceptualize the MNE as an international political actor theoretically? Decades of international relations (IR) theory provide IB with a useful place to start. Our new “Self-preservation Perspective of the MNE” uses IR theory to provide a new ontology of the MNE in a truly interdisciplinary way. It offers a way for IB researchers to frame and operationalize power relations between the MNE and other actors to explain MNE political behavior in an ethical and normative context (see Buzdugan et al., 2026). We define the self-preservation of the MNE as:

In his canonical IR work, Politics Among Nations, Hans Morgenthau famously argued that “international politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power” (Morgenthau, 1949, p. 13). Power, in other words, is a feature of all political actors and the power dynamics between them are inherent in all political processes, be it at the local, regional and international levels. If the field of IB adopts this foundational concept from IR, then the MNE can be theorized as a political actor that seeks and exercises power as it engages with political processes, strategies and activities, especially in geopolitical environments. The MNE, therefore, uses power both proactively and reactively – or offensively and defensively – to advance and protect its interests and assets at home and internationally. By exercising its power, the MNEacts politically and contends with the power of other actors, such as national and foreign governments, societal groups such as trade unions and even other MNEs. We refer to the relative power of other actors that seek to constrain the power of the MNE as “counterbalancing power.” Host country governments, civil society, NGOs and labor unions use their counterbalancing power to limit or neutralize the power of the MNE (Buzdugan et al., 2026). The dynamics of these power relations define political behavior of the MNE and understanding it is crucial if IB research seeks “more explicit engagement with the political and normative implications of MNEs operations in contested environments,” as discussed in the “Rules or no rules” article (Burmester et al., 2026).

Therefore, at the core of theorizing the MNE as a political actor in IB is to take seriously that it possesses political power and exercises it in various forms (Barnett and Duvall, 2005). Power, as Barnett and Duvall (2005, p. 45) defined it, “is the production, in and through social relations, of effects on actors that shape their capacity to control their fate.” Each of the self-preservation behaviors we discuss below is an attempt by MNEs to control their fate by acting politically on other actors, particularly governments and societal actors. Central also to theorizing the MNE as a political actor is the insight from IR theory that structurally, the geopolitical environment is “anarchic,” devoid of an overarching authority above the level of states to enforce international rules and norms, despite the intricate and overlapping webs of global, regional and bilateral agreements and governance institutions of security, trade and investment, which are relatively weak (Axelrod and Keohane, 1985; Weiss and Wilkinson, 2019). This absence of central political authority in the world to resolve tensions and conflicts presents a fundamental issue of fear and lack of trust between international actors, including MNEs, states, international organizations and other actors (Grieco, 1988). Therefore, states and international actors, including MNEs, exist in a “self-help” system, whereby they rely on themselves for their survival in a Hobbesian-like struggle of “all against all” (Hymer, 1978). The self-help nature of the geopolitical environment implies that states, MNEs and other international actors seek to possess and exercise power for the purposes of “self-preservation” (Waltz, 1979, p. 118).

In an IR context, our perspective has much in common with Andrew et al.’s analysis of how foreign policy affects multinational firms (Andrew et al., 2025). However, while their focus is primarily on how multinational firms are affected by foreign policy, our approach also examines how multinational firms, through their political power, affect foreign policy.

Our new “Self-preservation Perspective of the MNE” operationalizes the MNE as a political actor concerned fundamentally with its own survival in both the competitive global market and in the uncertain geopolitical environment. The Hobbesian nature of the international self-help system combined with the underlying self-preservation motive of the MNE implies that we cannot assume, as in much of IB theory, that firms always act within ethical and legal boundaries (Cuervo-Cazurra et al., 2021). Instead, based on IR theory, we can assume that MNEs will respond politically to perceived threats to their existence in the forms of competition from other firms, from political risks – for example, seen as government regulation, pressure from societal groups and political instability (Sinani et al., 2026) – and from “challenges arising from geopolitical tensions, wars, sanctions, trade restrictions and nationalist or populist movements,” as it is put in the “Rules or no rules” article (Burmester et al., 2026). These challenges have arguably heightened the hidden, underlying and ever present perception of insecurity, vulnerability and threat to the MNE’s viability that characterizes “latency” in our definition of the self-preserving MNE; thus making concerns about survival and self-preservation even more salient in the current global economic landscape (Sinkovics et al., 2026). Each form of such perceived threat involves an external actor or institution with the relative power to affect the viability, if not the very survival, of the MNE. From the MNE’s perspective, the perceived nature and the scale of the threat and the perceived level of power of its adversary, vis-à-vis its own power, motivate it to act politically to preserve itself (Waltz, 1979: 119).

Our self-preservation perspective, rooted in IR theory, may help IB research to study, analyze and explain the underlying political motives of MNEs in domestic and geopolitical settings, and how they seek and exercise power to protect themselves, their assets and their positions in the face of perceived threats. This understanding of the MNE helps to integrate the nature of power into IB theory. From a normative and ethical perspective, the self-preservation perspective provides a basis to explain why MNE behavior may systematically diverge from societal interests. If MNEs are not only responding to politicized environments but actively participate in shaping and contesting the institutional and discursive conditions in which they operate, their actions extend beyond instrumental adaptation and produce broader, often anti-societal, consequences.

Beyond reacting to threats, MNEs also address constraints and opportunities arising from regulatory regimes and market competition, seeking to influence and shape these environments to their advantage. The extent of such action depends on their relative power vis-à-vis countervailing forces. From a self-preservation perspective, this dynamic drives the pursuit of opportunities to influence and shape environments in ways that sustain organizational survival and maintain relative power, even when doing so entails anti-societal behavior.

We define MNE anti-societal behavior as:

Once again, these behaviors are driven by the pursuit of self-preservation under conditions of perceived political and economic threat and uncertainty, which systematically generate negative societal outcomes such as environmental degradation, labor exploitation or anti-democratic influence on regulatory systems. The self-preservation perspective suggests that such MNE behavior is not an anomaly or deviation, but a structural manifestation of its intrinsic drive to secure its survival, protect its market position and enhance its relative power within its domestic and geopolitical settings (Buzdugan et al., 2026). Several examples of anti-societal company behavior can be found in different industries, e.g. in the chemical industry, automotive industry, the refrigerator industry, the tobacco industry, the financial services industry and the energy sector (for an extensive analysis of such behavior at the company level in these industries, see Freese, 2020).

Following the logic of IR theory (Waltz, 1979: 118), this MNE behavior can occur on a spectrum that ranges from, at the very least, assurance of its continued existence and at the very most, dominance of its market and political environments. This important insight from IR suggests that a self-preservation strategy need not be “defensive” to protect the MNE. With sufficient political power, the MNE may seek, for instance, to proactively alter the regulatory and/or market landscape to ensure its continued existence. One illustration of this is the idea of Big Tech MNEs as “world makers”:

Such “world making” on the part of Big tech companies is on the dominance end of the self-preservation spectrum, which may afford Big Tech MNEs unrivaled market positions into the future.

Building on this understanding, we identify a set of self-preservation behaviors through which MNEs address threats, constraints and opportunities arising from regulatory regimes and market competition (Oliver, 1991): influencing behavior; avoiding behavior; exiting behavior and adapting behavior. These behaviors are not mutually exclusive and should not be understood as fixed categories of action. Rather, MNEs may combine or shift between them as changes in the relative power between the MNE and “counterbalancing forces” alter the constraints and opportunities they face. Drawing on Galbraith’s (2007, 2017) notion of countervailing power, we define these “counterbalancing forces” as:

Accordingly, the extent to which an MNE engages in influencing, avoiding, adapting or exiting behavior depends on the relative balance of power between the MNE and these counterbalancing forces. When the MNE possesses greater relative power, it is more likely to pursue self-preserving behaviors that seek to influence or avoid external constraints. Conversely, when counterbalancing forces are sufficiently strong to constrain the MNE and enforce compliance, adaptation or exit become more likely responses. Movement between these behaviors should therefore be understood as reflecting shifts in the relative balance of power between the MNE and the actors and institutions seeking to constrain its actions.

First, influencing behavior reflects an offensive and proactive strategy in which the MNE actively seeks to shape, alter or create rules and regulations that are critical to its core business model. This behavior emerges when regulatory regimes are of high strategic importance and when the MNE possesses sufficient internal and external capabilities to exert political influence. Through nonmarket activities such as lobbying, agenda setting, coalition building or the provision of expert knowledge, MNEs may redefine regulatory frameworks in ways that reduce uncertainty and enhance their relative power (Scherer and Palazzo, 2011). In contexts characterized by institutional ambiguity or emerging technologies, this behavior can extend to the creation of new standards and governance structures, positioning the MNE as a quasi-legitimized political actor with significant influence over rule-making processes (Ruggie, 2018).

For example, when Swedish pharmaceutical company Pharmacia introduced Nicorette, a nicotine-based smoking cessation product, into the USA, it faced a highly unfavorable regulatory and normative environment in which nicotine was widely viewed as a harmful and illegitimate substance. In response, Pharmacia adopted a strategy aimed at influencing and redefining the regulatory framework surrounding smoking cessation products. Through lobbying, conferences, advertising in industry press and the provision of expert medical knowledge to regulators, physicians and pharmacists, Pharmacia influenced U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidelines and promoted nicotine as a legitimate smoking cessation treatment, thereby contributing to the creation and institutionalization of a new product category (Regnér and Edman, 2014).

Second, avoiding behavior captures situations in which the MNE seeks to circumvent, delay or weaken the enforcement of existing rules and regulations. Rather than directly reshaping the regulatory environment, the firm deploys its resources and capabilities to minimize exposure to constraints that threaten its business model. This may involve technological strategies, legal contestation, narrative construction or the mobilization of societal support to legitimize contested practices. It relies on its relative advantages such as superior information, legal expertise and financial resources, which enable it to operate at the margins of regulatory compliance while limiting potential sanctions (Oliver, 1991).

For example, in 2023 US car maker Tesla refused to sign a collective bargaining agreement with Swedish union IF Metall, despite five years of negotiations. It became one of Sweden’s longest labor disputes in over three decades. Tesla perceived collective bargaining as a threat and sought to avoid institutional constraints that threatened its business model, cost structures and organizational flexibility. To sustain its operations during union blockades, Tesla relied on legal action, alternative logistics networks, foreign service providers and strikebreakers from other European countries, enabling the firm to circumvent local labor pressures while limiting the effectiveness of collective industrial action (Buzdugan et al., 2026).

While the conflict is ongoing as of the writing of this article, Tesla’s political behavior with the Swedish unions follows a pattern of anti-union activity in the USA and elsewhere (McGill, 2024; Nichols, 2024). The intended effect is to remove the threat of collective action and thereby diffuse the power of labor. Citing evidence from a number of official sources, Minchin (2021) found that Tesla’s nonunionized labor force was exposed to longer working hours and higher injury rates than industry averages. Indeed, Telsa’s CEO Elon Musk framed challenging working conditions as an issue of self-preservation of the company when he stated, “How do we not die and have everyone not lose their jobs?” (Minchin, 2021, p. 441).

Third, exiting behavior reflects a strategic withdrawal from a host country or regulatory environment under conditions of overwhelming countervailing power against the MNE (Oliver and Holzinger, 2008). In additional to this conventional interpretation of exit as failure, our self-preservation perspective also conceptualizes exit as a deliberate political instrument. When the MNE lacks the capability or willingness to manage relationships with nonmarket actors, or when regulatory constraints fundamentally threaten its viability, withdrawal becomes a means of exerting pressure. The threat or realization of divestment imposes economic and social costs on the host country, including job losses, reduced investment and tax revenues and erosion of organizational knowledge and essential services. In this way, exit functions as a form of political signaling that reshapes MNE relative power and bargaining dynamics.

As an example, in 2024 oil and gas giant ExxonMobil threatened withdrawal from operations in European Union (EU) countries in response to the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. The regulation aimed to “foster sustainable and responsible corporate behaviour in companies’ operations and across their global value chains” and “address adverse human rights and environmental impacts of their actions inside and outside Europe” (European Commission, 2025). As its CEO Darren Woods stated:

Such a threat of withdrawal functions as a strategy to exert power against a host government’s regulation. Yet, the threat of withdrawal by ExxonMobil was used in conjunction with lobbying pressure by the Trump administration on behalf of ExxonMobil through trade negotiations with the EU (Smyth and Hancock, 2025) to amplify pressure on the EU to water down the regulation.

In the case of ExxonMobil, exiting behavior occurred in conjunction with other self-preservation behaviors, particularly in response to the threat posed by climate change regulation. ExxonMobil’s attempts to water down sustainability regulation in the EU through the threat of exit follows a pattern of broader attempts to downplay the effects of climate change for over four decades. As investigative journalists in 2015 uncovered (Song et al., 2015), ExxonMobil was aware of the global warming effects of fossil fuels in the early-1980s, and may have sought to undermine knowledge of climate science to the public, according to more recent evidence (Noor, 2023).

Finally, adapting behavior represents a more defensive response in which the MNE aligns its operations with existing rules and regulations. This typically occurs when the firm lacks sufficient power to influence or avoid regulatory constraints, or when such constraints are of limited relevance to its core business. It relates to the MNE’s flexibility to react and efficiently address rules and regulations (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983), by adjusting and recombining its own recourses in response to external political and regulatory demands (Teece, 2016; Pitelis and Teece, 2018). This “adapting” view aligns with extant IB theory, suggesting that efficient alignment with external requirements tends to enhance performance and reduce costs through finding more efficient organizational solutions (Chandler, 1993).

As an illustration of this behavior, the US-based ride-sharing company Uber initially withdrew from the Danish market in 2017, citing challenges in complying with regulations governing taxi companies in Denmark. Uber had positioned itself a digital platform, rather than a transport service, and as such had argued that it was exempted from such regulation (Henley, 2017). Yet, an EU ruling on Uber in 2017 decided that it should be regulated as a “transport provider” across Europe (Ram et al., 2017). As such, Uber was subject to regulations in Denmark stipulating that cars used in the service be fitted with seat occupancy sensors and fare meters. In the first market entry in 2017, Uber lacked sufficient political power to influence or avoid EU regulations, following a series of political setbacks associated with aggressive lobbying efforts and avoidance tactics in Europe and elsewhere, as exposed by the “Uber Files” in 2022 (Bhuiyan and Milmo, 2022). Therefore, an adaptation strategy was followed in response. Uber’s adaptation strategy involved reentering the Danish market through the acquisition of major Danish taxi company, Dantaxi, which was already in compliance with Danish transport regulation. As Uber stated:

This example illustrates how MNEs may dynamically shift between different self-preservation behaviors over time. Faced with strong countervailing power from the Danish Government and realization of its inability to alter the regulatory environment, Uber transitioned from exit to adaptation. By reentering the market through the acquisition of Dantaxi, Uber sought to secure continued market participation within the constraints imposed by existing institutions.

As all the examples above indicate, the MNEs’ self-preservation behaviors depend on several factors. For instance, it is reasonable to expect that the choice reflects the MNEs’ relative power. In general, if the MNE is powerful relative to governments or other regulatory bodies, influence or avoidance will be chosen rather than exit or adaptation. However, as the ExxonMobil case demonstrates, a threat to exit might also be used as a powerful tool to reach a certain goal.

However, we would also expect the market’s relative importance to the company to affect strategic behavior. For Pharmacia, it was crucial that the new product be classified as a medical product. Consequently, the company was prepared to invest significant time and resources to influence the authorities’ regulatory work. Despite being a relatively small pharmaceutical company, its specialized market knowledge gave it enough political strength to do so. In comparison, Tesla is a highly powerful company in the global arena, but the Swedish market is probably too small to justify dedicating time and resources to try to change the well-established system of collective agreements in the Swedish labor market. However, Tesla’s economic and political strength allows the company to maintain its hitherto successful avoidance strategy (It should be pointed out that a corresponding analysis can be made from the perspective of governments).

Altogether, influence, avoiding, exiting and adapting behaviors are reflections of the multifaceted ways in which MNE self-preservation is expressed. It is important to consider that these behaviors exist on a spectrum. The MNE’s selection of these behaviors and often their combination, as is evident in the case of ExxonMobil and Uber, depends on the perceived level of the threats together with the constraints and opportunities arising from regulatory regimes and market competition. A fundamental constraint, and one that current IB research tends to overlook, is its relative power against counterbalancing government and societal forces.

In the current “Trumpist” era of nationalist discourse, trade protectionism and skepticism of supranational institutions, the “Rules or no rules” article (Burmester et al., 2026) is a necessary and important contribution to the field of IB. It rightly calls for a more political perspective of the MNE. The four contributions admirably paint a captivating portrait of the growing politicization of IB and convincingly demonstrate the importance of a political theory of the MNE. We therefore take the first step to develop in earnest a political theory through our “Self-Preservation Perspective of the MNE” (Buzdugan et al., 2026), which puts power at the center of the analysis, as power is at the root of all politics (Morgenthau, 1949, p. 13).

Our self-preservation perspective conceptualizes the MNE as inherently political, drawing on international relations theory to explain how it actively deploys its relative power to protect its market position, assets and advantages in the face of perceived uncertainty and threat in the global environment. From this vantage point, we do not only account for the presence of MNE/corporate political activities as a strategic function of the firm, as per extant IB and management research. More importantly, we integrate politics into the analysis through power dynamics with other actors such as governments and other societal actors. Thus, it enables IB researchers to analyze and explain why MNEs seek power, how they exert it and how such power is counterbalanced by other actors. It also provides a new perspective on “anti-societal” MNE behaviors as fundamentally driven by “self-preservation” in the face of perceived threats, and how power dynamics between MNEs and other actors influence anti-societal outcomes. Put differently, outcomes that may appear anti-societal, such as environmental degradation, anti-trust violations and anti-democratic activity, are not anomalies but structural expressions of the firm’s intrinsic drive for survival. By foregrounding insecurity, survival and relative power as central drivers of MNE behavior alongside efficiency, value creation and entrepreneurship, our perspective suggests that MNE entrepreneurial behavior and innovation may be outweighed by self-preserving behavior aimed at defending existing business models and strategic advantages. Rather than adapting through new products or processes in response to regulatory initiatives, MNEs may find it more attractive to engage politically against such initiatives to preserve the status quo and protect existing strategic advantages. It thereby moves the debate beyond calls for greater political awareness toward a more political analytical framework for studying the societal implications of MNE activity.