Tesla buys Bitcoins, so what?
Posted by Michel Morvan on
Multinationals , whether from Silicon Valley or not, are increasingly making headlines. Without always really understanding, we watch announcements pass over our heads that we imagine will have an impact on our lives at some point: Tesla is buying €1.5 billion worth of bitcoins (should I buy some too?); Total wants to change its name and call itself TotalEnergies from now on (but why? Am I changing its name?); Veolia is launching a takeover bid for Suez (is water likely to cost me more?); etc.
Analyzing and understanding the strategies of these multinationals is not always easy. But, even more, attempts to understand them most often come from within the system. Financial analysts or economic journalists, for example, or in any case company experts.
Luca Marsi's book, The Strategies of Multinationals , is resolutely committed and addresses this classic question of multinational strategies in a very original way. Rather than starting from within the system (the company or more generally the world of the market economy, with its references and methods), he studies it from the outside and by relying on intellectual references that are only too rarely called upon in works on this subject.
This approach allows him to conduct a particularly interesting study of the phenomena concerned. It leads him to conclude, for example, that these strategies and the discourses that convey them, far from being simple "economic facts" , are as much the fruit of a neoliberal ideology as a vector of consolidation and diffusion of this ideology among the individuals who are its actors. This perspective sheds new light on the subject and, by encouraging potential detractors to contest its premises or conclusions, will necessarily force them to broaden their perspective and to themselves integrate into their field of reflection the central dimensions of Luca Marsi's work: the social , political and ideological aspects.
The Strategies of Multinationals , by Luca Marsi, thus opens the debate on a subject traditionally reserved for business experts by placing it in a much broader scope . Particularly well written, based on varied and concrete examples, this work will be enlightening for everyone: citizens keen to understand the behind the scenes, students , economic players or analysts , but also marketing and business strategy specialists who will find in it a counterpoint to traditional approaches and, certainly, food for thought .
