Transnational corporations, or TNCs, are companies that operate across more than one country and can have a major impact on global development. Supporters argue that TNCs can help poorer countries by creating jobs, increasing exports, building infrastructure, transferring skills and technology, and attracting foreign direct investment. This fits with modernisation and neo-liberal views, which often see global business as a route to economic growth. However, sociologists influenced by dependency theory argue that TNCs can also reproduce inequality. They may pay low wages, weaken trade unions, extract raw materials, damage the environment, avoid tax, repatriate profits to richer countries, or use their power to influence governments. This means the impact of TNCs is highly contested: they may support development in some contexts, but they can also create exploitation, neo-colonialism and environmental harm.
In this activity, you will investigate a series of fictional TNC case files and decide what each piece of evidence reveals about the company’s role in development. You will classify examples as showing corporate responsibility, neo-colonialism, false needs or environmental harm. This will help you practise applying key sociological concepts to item-style evidence, rather than just memorising definitions. As you work through the case files, focus carefully on the detail: is the company genuinely helping workers and communities, using economic power to control a poorer country, encouraging unnecessary consumption, or damaging people and the environment? This activity is designed to build balanced evaluation for AQA Global Development answers on the role of TNCs.
TNC Case File Builder
Choose a fictional transnational corporation, read the case file, then classify each piece of evidence. Does it mainly show corporate responsibility, neo-colonialism, false needs or environmental harm?
Corporate responsibility
Company actions that appear to support workers, communities, sustainability or ethical business.
Neo-colonialism
Economic control continues through trade, investment, debt, contracts or TNC power after formal independence.
False needs
Companies create demand for products people do not really need, shaping identity through consumption.
Environmental harm
Damage caused by pollution, extraction, waste, carbon emissions, deforestation or resource depletion.
Choose a fictional TNC
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