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A multi-national corporation ( MNC ; also called a multi-national enterprise ( MNE ), trans-national enterprise ( TNE ), trans-national corporation ( TNC ), international corporation , or state less corporation , ) is a corporate organization that owns and controls the production of goods or services in at least one country other than its home country. Control is considered an important aspect of an MNC to distinguish it from international portfolio investment organizations , such as some international mutual funds that invest in corporations abroad solely to diversify financial risks. Black's Law Dictionary suggests that a company or group should be considered a multi-national corporation "if it derives 25% or more of its revenue from out-of-home-country operations".

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128-574: Shopee Pte. Ltd. , trading as Shopee , is a Singaporean multinational technology company that specializes in e-commerce . It operates as a subsidiary of Sea Limited . Shopee was founded in 2015 in Singapore , and subsequently expanded its operations to other countries. As of 2023, Shopee is recognized as the largest e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia, with a total gross merchandise volume (GMV) of $ 47.9 billion. This figure represents nearly half of

256-484: A concept , reasoning that concepts are not restricted to an individual or a generation, may persist for long periods of time, and may evolve. Opinions differ as to how best to apply the concept of memes within a "proper" disciplinary framework. One view sees memes as providing a useful philosophical perspective with which to examine cultural evolution . Proponents of this view (such as Susan Blackmore and Daniel Dennett ) argue that considering cultural developments from

384-766: A basis in a national ethos , being ultimate without a specific nationhood, and that this lack of an ethos appears in their ways of operating as they enter into contracts with countries that have low human rights or environmental standards . In the world economy facilitated by multinational corporations, capital will increasingly be able to play workers, communities, and nations off against one another as they demand tax, regulation and wage concessions while threatening to move. In other words, increased mobility of multinational corporations benefits capital while workers and communities lose. Some negative outcomes generated by multinational corporations include increased inequality , unemployment , and wage stagnation . Raymond Vernon presents

512-410: A book or a musical score . Adam McNamara has suggested that memes can be thereby classified as either internal or external memes (i-memes or e-memes). Some commentators have likened the transmission of memes to the spread of contagions . Social contagions such as fads , hysteria , copycat crime , and copycat suicide exemplify memes seen as the contagious imitation of ideas. Observers distinguish

640-494: A case in point. In one set of experiments he asked religious people to write down on a piece of paper the meanings of the Ten Commandments . Despite the subjects' own expectations of consensus, interpretations of the commandments showed wide ranges of variation, with little evidence of consensus. In another experiment, subjects with autism and subjects without autism interpreted ideological and religious sayings (for example, "Let

768-552: A certain culture may develop unique designs and methods of tool -making that give it a competitive advantage over another culture. Each tool-design thus acts somewhat similarly to a biological gene in that some populations have it and others do not, and the meme's function directly affects the presence of the design in future generations. In keeping with the thesis that in evolution one can regard organisms simply as suitable "hosts" for reproducing genes, Dawkins argues that one can view people as "hosts" for replicating memes. Consequently,

896-426: A consistent, rigorous, and precise understanding of what typically makes up one unit of cultural transmission remains a problem in debates about memetics . In contrast, the concept of genetics gained concrete evidence with the discovery of the biological functions of DNA . Meme transmission requires a physical medium, such as photons, sound waves, touch, taste, or smell because memes can be transmitted only through

1024-498: A corporation invests in a country in which it is not domiciled, it is called foreign direct investment (FDI). Countries may place restrictions on direct investment; for example, China has historically required partnerships with local firms or special approval for certain types of investments by foreigners, although some of these restrictions were eased in 2019. Similarly, the United States Committee on Foreign Investment in

1152-541: A cross-border model, and exited Argentina entirely. In January 2023, the company announced the closure of its Polish operations. By Q2 2023, Shopee remained the largest online marketplace in Southeast Asia, with a traffic share ranging from 30% to 50% across the region, and also ranked as the leading online shopping platform in Taiwan. In the fourth quarter of 2023, Shopee reported a 46% year-on-year increase in gross orders, reaching 2.5 billion. The gross merchandise value (GMV) for

1280-429: A free market system where there is little government interference. As a result, international wealth is maximized with free exchange of goods and services. To many economic liberals, multinational corporations are the vanguard of the liberal order. They are the embodiment par excellence of the liberal ideal of an interdependent world economy. They have taken the integration of national economies beyond trade and money to

1408-608: A gene, meme theory originated as an attempt to apply biological evolutionary principles to cultural information transfer and cultural evolution . Thus, memetics attempts to apply conventional scientific methods (such as those used in population genetics and epidemiology ) to explain existing patterns and transmission of cultural ideas. Principal criticisms of memetics include the claim that memetics ignores established advances in other fields of cultural study, such as sociology , cultural anthropology , cognitive psychology , and social psychology . Questions remain whether or not

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1536-425: A kind of semiotic activity, however she too denies that memes are units, referring to them as "sign systems" instead. In Limor Shifman's account of Internet memetics, she also denies memetics as being unitary. She argues memes are not unitary, however many assume they are because many previous memetic researchers confounded memes with the cultural interest in "virals": singular informational objects which spread with

1664-649: A larger meme. A meme could consist of a single word, or a meme could consist of the entire speech in which that word first occurred. This forms an analogy to the idea of a gene as a single unit of self-replicating information found on the self-replicating chromosome . While the identification of memes as "units" conveys their nature to replicate as discrete, indivisible entities, it does not imply that thoughts somehow become quantized or that " atomic " ideas exist that cannot be dissected into smaller pieces. A meme has no given size. Susan Blackmore writes that melodies from Beethoven 's symphonies are commonly used to illustrate

1792-562: A manner analogous to that of biological evolution . Memes do this through processes analogous to those of variation , mutation , competition , and inheritance , each of which influences a meme's reproductive success. Memes spread through the behavior that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct , while others may survive, spread, and (for better or for worse) mutate. Memes that replicate most effectively enjoy more success, and some may replicate effectively even when they prove to be detrimental to

1920-739: A mechanism for solidifying group identity, valuable for a pack-hunting species whose individuals rely on cooperation to catch large and fast prey. Frequently the evolutionary preconception in terms of which such theories are framed is implicitly group-selectionist, but it is possible to rephrase the theories in terms of orthodox gene selection. He argued that the role of key replicator in cultural evolution belongs not to genes, but to memes replicating thought from person to person by means of imitation. These replicators respond to selective pressures that may or may not affect biological reproduction or survival. In her book The Meme Machine , Susan Blackmore regards religions as particularly tenacious memes. Many of

2048-414: A meme that shortens the longevity of its hosts will tend to disappear faster. However, as hosts are mortal, retention is not sufficient to perpetuate a meme in the long term; memes also need transmission. Life-forms can transmit information both vertically (from parent to child, via replication of genes) and horizontally (through viruses and other means). Memes can replicate vertically or horizontally within

2176-481: A meme's-eye view— as if memes themselves respond to pressure to maximise their own replication and survival—can lead to useful insights and yield valuable predictions into how culture develops over time. Others such as Bruce Edmonds and Robert Aunger have focused on the need to provide an empirical grounding for memetics to become a useful and respected scientific discipline . A third approach, described by Joseph Poulshock, as "radical memetics" seeks to place memes at

2304-481: A memo to all employees detailing cost-cutting measures aimed at achieving "self-sufficiency" for the company. These measures involved restrictions on business expenses and a temporary suspension of compensation for Shopee's top executives. Another round of job cuts was also announced, which affected employees in Singapore, Indonesia, and China. In the fourth quarter of 2022, Shopee achieved a positive adjusted EBITDA for

2432-487: A million troops to help, and by February 1991, Iraqi forces were expelled from Kuwait. Due to the oil boycott from Kuwait and Iran, oil prices rose and quickly recovered. Saudi Arabia once again led OPEC, and thanks to assistance in defending Kuwait, new relations emerged between the USA and OPEC. Operation "Desert Storm" brought mutual dependence among the main oil producers. OPEC continued to influence global oil prices but recognized

2560-428: A mimicked theme. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate , mutate, and respond to selective pressures . In popular language, a meme may refer to an Internet meme , typically an image, that is remixed, copied, and circulated in a shared cultural experience online. Proponents theorize that memes are a viral phenomenon that may evolve by natural selection in

2688-676: A nail, a skill that a learner imitates from watching a demonstration without necessarily imitating every discrete movement modeled by the teacher in the demonstration, stroke for stroke. Susan Blackmore distinguishes the difference between the two modes of inheritance in the evolution of memes, characterizing the Darwinian mode as "copying the instructions" and the Lamarckian as "copying the product". Clusters of memes, or memeplexes (also known as meme complexes or as memecomplexes ), such as cultural or political doctrines and systems, may also play

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2816-400: A part in the acceptance of new memes. Memeplexes comprise groups of memes that replicate together and coadapt. Memes that fit within a successful memeplex may gain acceptance by "piggybacking" on the success of the memeplex. As an example, John D. Gottsch discusses the transmission, mutation and selection of religious memeplexes and the theistic memes contained. Theistic memes discussed include

2944-505: A particular rate and veracity such as a video or a picture. As such, Shifman argues that Dawkins' original notion of meme is closer to what communication and information studies consider digitally viral replication. Dawkins noted the three conditions that must exist for evolution to occur: Dawkins emphasizes that the process of evolution naturally occurs whenever these conditions co-exist, and that evolution does not apply only to organic elements such as genes. He regards memes as also having

3072-573: A post stating that he had relocated as part of a job offer from Shopee to work at the company's headquarters in Singapore. However, the offer was revoked after he disembarked from the plane in Singapore with his family. Multiple job offers were allegedly affected, as other users claimed they had similarly resigned from current positions and terminated housing contracts to join Shopee, only for their offers to be rescinded. On September 28, 2022, Shopee Philippines received backlash when rumors started spreading that

3200-805: A report by iPrice. During this period, gross orders grew by 92.7% to 246.3 million, compared to 127.8 million in the previous year, and the gross merchandise value (GMV) surged by 72.7% to US$ 3.8 billion from US$ 2.2 billion. Shopee expanded its operations to Brazil in 2019, marking its first venture into Latin America. By 2023, Shopee reported engaging with over three million local merchants in Brazil, who contributed to more than 90% of its national sales. In September 2021, Shopee introduced its marketplace in Poland, followed by launches in Spain and France. However, by early 2022, Shopee exited

3328-456: A sign (a reference to an object), an object (the thing being referred to), and an interpretant (the interpreting actor of a sign). They argue the meme unit is a sign which only is defined by its replication ability. Accordingly, in the broadest sense, the objects of copying are memes, whereas the objects of translation and interpretation are signs. Later, Sara Cannizzaro more fully develops out this semiotic relation in order to reframe memes as being

3456-425: A single biological generation. They may also lie dormant for long periods of time. Memes reproduce by copying from a nervous system to another one, either by communication or imitation . Imitation often involves the copying of an observed behavior of another individual. Communication may be direct or indirect, where memes transmit from one individual to another through a copy recorded in an inanimate source, such as

3584-424: A successful meme may or may not need to provide any benefit to its host. Unlike genetic evolution, memetic evolution can show both Darwinian and Lamarckian traits. Cultural memes will have the characteristic of Lamarckian inheritance when a host aspires to replicate the given meme through inference rather than by exactly copying it. Take for example the case of the transmission of a simple skill such as hammering

3712-411: A thousand flowers bloom" or "To everything there is a season"). People with autism showed a significant tendency to closely paraphrase and repeat content from the original statement (for example: "Don't cut flowers before they bloom"). Controls tended to infer a wider range of cultural meanings with little replicated content (for example: "Go with the flow" or "Everyone should have equal opportunity"). Only

3840-458: A website. A notable feature of Shopee is its escrow service, Shopee Guarantee , which withholds payments from sellers until the buyers confirm receipt of their orders, thus securing transactions. In 2016, the company launched its seller education platform called Shopee University , which aims to help train local entrepreneurs and businesses in setting up their online businesses. In 2017, Shopee launched Shopee Mall with 200 brands in Singapore and

3968-467: Is a US$ 7.90 bonus if they can deliver 40 or more packages in a single workday. There is also no compensation for fuel or parking fees. Shopee responded to the allegations that it has a fair incentive scheme that is in line with Indonesia's market and regulations, and what they offer is "highly competitive" within the industry. In late August 2022, a user of the Chinese social networking platform Maimai uploaded

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4096-500: Is a shortening (modeled on gene ) of mimeme , which comes from Ancient Greek mīmēma ( μίμημα ; pronounced [míːmɛːma] ), meaning 'imitated thing', itself from mimeisthai ( μιμεῖσθαι , 'to imitate'), from mimos ( μῖμος , 'mime'). The word was coined by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976) as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining

4224-449: Is accelerated in conditions of propagative difficulty, then we would expect to encounter variations of religious memes, established in general populations, addressed to scientific communities. Using a memetic approach, Robertson deconstructed two attempts to privilege religiously held spirituality in scientific discourse. Advantages of a memetic approach as compared to more traditional "modernization" and "supply side" theses in understanding

4352-454: Is beneficial because it serves to emphasize transmission and acquisition properties that parallel the study of epidemiology . These properties make salient the sometimes parasitic nature of acquired memes, and as a result individuals should be motivated to reflectively acquire memes using what he calls a " Neurathian bootstrap " process. In Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology , Jack Balkin argued that memetic processes can explain many of

4480-528: Is no reason to think that the same balance will exist in the selection pressures on memes. Semiotic theorists such as Terrence Deacon and Kalevi Kull regard the concept of a meme as a primitivized or degenerate concept of a sign , containing only a sign's basic ability to be copied, but lacks other core elements of the sign concept such as translation and interpretation. Evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr similarly disapproved of Dawkins's gene-based view of meme, asserting it to be an "unnecessary synonym" for

4608-410: Is often handled through international arbitration . The actions of multinational corporations are strongly supported by economic liberalism and free market system in a globalized international society. According to the economic realist view, individuals act in rational ways to maximize their self-interest and therefore, when individuals act rationally, markets are created and they function best in

4736-466: Is somewhat ambiguous. He welcomed N. K. Humphrey 's suggestion that "memes should be considered as living structures, not just metaphorically", and proposed to regard memes as "physically residing in the brain". Although Dawkins said his original intentions had been simpler, he approved Humphrey's opinion and he endorsed Susan Blackmore 's 1999 project to give a scientific theory of memes, complete with predictions and empirical support. The term meme

4864-545: Is that in denying memetics unitary status is to deny a particularly fundamental part of Dawkins' original argument. In particular, denying memes are a unit, or are explainable in some clear unitary structure denies the cultural analogy that inspired Dawkins to define them. If memes are not describable as unitary, memes are not accountable within a neo-Darwinian model of evolutionary culture. Within cultural anthropology, materialist approaches are skeptical of such units. In particular, Dan Sperber argues that memes are not unitary in

4992-865: Is usually a large corporation incorporated in one country that produces or sells goods or services in various countries. Two common characteristics shared by MNCs are their large size and centrally controlled worldwide activities. MNCs may gain from their global presence in a variety of ways. First of all, MNCs can benefit from the economy of scale by spreading R&D expenditures and advertising costs over their global sales, pooling global purchasing power over suppliers, and utilizing their technological and managerial experience globally with minimal additional costs. Furthermore, MNCs can use their global presence to take advantage of underpriced labor services available in certain developing countries and gain access to special R&D capabilities residing in advanced foreign countries. The problem of moral and legal constraints upon

5120-809: The Dutch East India Company (VOC) founded in 1602. In addition to carrying on trade between Great Britain and its colonies, the British East India Company became a quasi-government in its own right, with local government officials and its own army in India. Other examples include the Swedish Africa Company founded in 1649 and the Hudson's Bay Company founded in 1670. These early corporations engaged in international trade and exploration and set up trading posts. The Dutch government took over

5248-455: The "prohibition of aberrant sexual practices such as incest, adultery, homosexuality, bestiality, castration, and religious prostitution", which may have increased vertical transmission of the parent religious memeplex. Similar memes are thereby included in the majority of religious memeplexes, and harden over time; they become an "inviolable canon" or set of dogmas , eventually finding their way into secular law . This could also be referred to as

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5376-650: The 19th century, such as the Rio Tinto company founded in 1873, which started with the purchase of sulfur and copper mines from the Spanish government. Rio Tinto, now based in London and Melbourne , Australia, has made many acquisitions and expanded globally to mine aluminum , iron ore , copper , uranium , and diamonds . European mines in South Africa began opening in the late 19th century, producing gold and other minerals for

5504-546: The English language. Senior officials, although mostly still Swedish, all learned English and all major internal documents were in English, the lingua franca of multinational corporations. After the war, the number of businesses having at least one foreign country operation rose drastically from a few thousand to 78,411 in 2007. Meanwhile, 74% of parent companies are located in economically advanced countries. Developing and former communist countries such as China, India, and Brazil are

5632-644: The European markets of France and Spain, retaining only its operations in Poland. In 2020, Shopee started operations in South Korea to help local merchants reach customers in its existing markets, although it did not establish a consumer-facing platform in South Korea. The following year, the company extended its reach within Latin America by commencing operations in Mexico, Chile, and Colombia. In November 2021, Shopee entered

5760-683: The Indian market with a soft launch, achieving over one million app installations on the Google Play Store and handling 100,000 orders a day. However, Shopee ceased its operations in India in March 2022, just five months after the launch. As of 2022, Shopee's app recorded 203 million downloads globally. For Q2 of that year, Shopee recorded US$ 1.7 billion in quarterly revenue. In September 2022, Shopee ended its local operations in Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, shifting to

5888-557: The International Energy Agency (IEA), enabling states to coordinate policy, gather data, and monitor global oil reserves. In the 1970s, OPEC gradually nationalized the Seven Sisters. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as the only largest world oil producer, could leverage this. However, Saudi Arabia opted for the correct approach and maintained consistent oil prices throughout the 1970s. In 1979, the "second oil shock" came from

6016-561: The Netherlands has become a popular choice, as its company laws have fewer requirements for meetings, compensation, and audit committees, and Great Britain had advantages due to laws on withholding dividends and a double-taxation treaty with the United States. Corporations can legally engage in tax avoidance through their choice of jurisdiction but must be careful to avoid illegal tax evasion . Corporations that are broadly active across

6144-545: The OLI framework. The other theoretical dimension of the role of multinational corporations concerns the relationship between the globalization of economic engagement and the culture of national and local responses. This has a history of self-conscious cultural management going back at least to the 60s. For example: Ernest Dichter, architect, of Exxon's international campaign, writing in the Harvard Business Review in 1963,

6272-539: The Philippines. On 3 September 2019, Shopee officially opened its six-story regional headquarters at Singapore Science Park . The new building spans 244,000 square feet (22,700 m) of space, which can accommodate 3,000 employees and is six times larger than Shopee's previous headquarters at Ascent Building. The building was leased by WeWork before it was relinquished to Shopee. Shopee has yet to turn profitable despite increasing its gross profit margin year-on-year in

6400-458: The Third World colonies. That changed dramatically after 1945 as investors turned to industrialized countries and invested in manufacturing (especially high-tech electronics, chemicals, drugs, and vehicles) as well as trade. Sweden's leading manufacturing concern was SKF , a leading maker of bearings for machinery. In order to expand its international business, it decided in 1966 it needed to use

6528-636: The U.S. applies its corporate taxation "extraterritorially", which has motivated tax inversions to change the home state. By 2019, most OECD nations, with the notable exception of the U.S., had moved to territorial tax in which only revenue inside the border was taxed; however, these nations typically scrutinize foreign income with controlled foreign corporation (CFC) rules to avoid base erosion and profit shifting . In practice, even under an extraterritorial system, taxes may be deferred until remittance, with possible repatriation tax holidays , and subject to foreign tax credits . Countries generally cannot tax

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6656-527: The United States sanctions against Iran ; European companies faced with the possibility of losing access to the U.S. market by trading with Iran. International investment agreements also facilitate direct investment between two countries, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and most favored nation status. Raymond Vernon reported in 1977 that of the largest multinationals focused on manufacturing, 250 were headquartered in

6784-506: The United States scrutinizes foreign investments. In addition, corporations may be prohibited from various business transactions by international sanctions or domestic laws. For example, Chinese domestic corporations or citizens have limitations on their ability to make foreign investments outside China, in part to reduce capital outflow . Countries can impose extraterritorial sanctions on foreign corporations even for doing business with other foreign corporations, which occurred in 2019 with

6912-609: The United States as the largest consumer and guarantor of the existing oil security order. Since the Iraq War, OPEC has had only a minor influence on oil prices, but it has expanded to 11 members, accounting for about 40 percent of total global oil production, although this is a decline from nearly 50 percent in 1974. Oil has practically become a common commodity, leading to much more volatile prices. Most OPEC members are wealthy, and most remain dependent on oil revenues, which has serious consequences, such as when OPEC members were pressured by

7040-461: The United States from 2010. The USA became the leading oil producer, creating tension with OPEC. In 2014, Saudi Arabia increased production to push new American producers out of the market, leading to lower prices. OPEC then reduced production in 2016 to raise prices, further worsening relations with the United States. By 2012, only 7% of the world's known oil reserves were in countries that allowed private international companies free rein; 65% were in

7168-610: The United States, 115 in Western Europe, 70 in Japan, and 20 in the rest of the world. The multinationals in banking numbered 20 headquartered in the United States, 13 in Europe, nine in Japan and three in Canada. Today multinationals can select from a variety of jurisdictions for various subsidiaries, but the ultimate parent company can select a single legal domicile ; The Economist suggests that

7296-687: The VOC in 1799, and during the 19th century, other governments increasingly took over private companies, most notably in British India. During the process of decolonization , the European colonial charter companies were disbanded, with the final colonial corporation, the Mozambique Company , dissolving in 1972. Mining of gold, silver, copper, and oil was a major activity early on and remains so today. International mining companies became prominent in Britain in

7424-498: The West to the post-colonial South and invest either in foreign expenditures or ostentatious economic development projects. After 1974, most of the money from OPEC members ceased as payments for goods and services or investments in Western industry. In February 1974, the first Washington Energy Conference was convened. The most significant contribution of this conference was the establishment of

7552-411: The ambassador for the company. That same year Shopee's 9.9 Super Shopping Day campaign featured a video of Ronaldo dancing to " Baby Shark ". The video went viral and became a meme in the football community, reaching 19 million people. The campaign resulted in a doubling of Shopee's gross orders and a more than tripling of its e-commerce sales. However the ad was panned by football fans due to nature of

7680-462: The behavior of multinational corporations, given that they are effectively "stateless" actors, is one of several urgent global socioeconomic problems that has emerged during the late twentieth century. Potentially, the best concept for analyzing society's governance limitations over modern corporations is the concept of "stateless corporations". Coined at least as early as 1991 in Business Week ,

7808-678: The centre of a materialistic theory of mind and of personal identity . Prominent researchers in evolutionary psychology and anthropology , including Scott Atran , Dan Sperber , Pascal Boyer , John Tooby and others, argue the possibility of incompatibility between modularity of mind and memetics. In their view, minds structure certain communicable aspects of the ideas produced, and these communicable aspects generally trigger or elicit ideas in other minds through inference (to relatively rich structures generated from often low-fidelity input) and not high-fidelity replication or imitation. Atran discusses communication involving religious beliefs as

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7936-728: The collapse of the Shah's regime in Iran. Iran became a regional power due to oil money and American weapons. The Shah eventually abdicated and fled the country. This prompted a strike by thousands of Iranian oil workers, significantly reducing oil production in Iran. Saudi Arabia tried to cope with the crisis by increasing production, but oil prices still soared, leading to the "second oil shock." Saudi Arabia significantly reduced oil production, losing most of its revenues. In 1986, Riyadh changed course, and oil production in Saudi Arabia sharply increased, flooding

8064-400: The common pool. Socrates may or may not have a gene or two alive in the world today, as G.C. Williams has remarked, but who cares? The meme-complexes of Socrates, Leonardo , Copernicus and Marconi are still going strong. In that context, Dawkins defined the meme as a unit of cultural transmission , or a unit of imitation and replication, but later definitions would vary. The lack of

8192-650: The companies. This occurred in 1960. Prior to the 1973 oil crisis , the Seven Sisters controlled around 85 percent of the world's petroleum reserves . In the 1970s, most countries with large reserves nationalized their reserves that had been owned by major oil companies. Since then, industry dominance has shifted to the OPEC cartel and state-owned oil and gas companies, such as Saudi Aramco , Gazprom (Russia), China National Petroleum Corporation , National Iranian Oil Company , PDVSA (Venezuela), Petrobras (Brazil), and Petronas (Malaysia). A unilateral increase in oil prices

8320-504: The company and also CR7 taking part in the endorsement for money. With fans stating "“This gets more crazy to me every time I watch it,” one fan wrote. Another said: “I’m sure the number of zeroes on the cheque made it worth the embarrassment!!”. In Q4 2017, Shopee became the third most visited e-commerce portal in Malaysia, overtaking Lelong, and became the top app on iOS and Google Play app stores. A December 2017 survey revealed that Shopee

8448-510: The conception was theoretically clarified in 1993: that an empirical strategy for defining a stateless corporation is with analytical tools at the intersection between demographic analysis and transportation research. This intersection is known as logistics management , and it describes the importance of rapidly increasing global mobility of resources. In a long history of analysis of multinational corporations, we are some quarter-century into an era of stateless corporations—corporations that meet

8576-426: The contagious imitation of memes from instinctively contagious phenomena such as yawning and laughing, which they consider innate (rather than socially learned) behaviors. Aaron Lynch described seven general patterns of meme transmission, or "thought contagion": Dawkins initially defined meme as a noun that "conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation ". John S. Wilkins retained

8704-643: The creation of a "world customer". The idea of a global corporate village entailed the management and reconstitution of parochial attachments to one's nation. It involved not a denial of the naturalness of national attachments, but an internationalization of the way a nation defines itself. "Multinational enterprise" (MNE) is the term used by international economist and similarly defined with the multinational corporation (MNC) as an enterprise that controls and manages production establishments, known as plants located in at least two countries. The multinational enterprise (MNE) will engage in foreign direct investment (FDI) as

8832-476: The current largest and most influential companies are publicly traded multinational corporations, including Forbes Global 2000 companies. The history of multinational corporations began with the history of colonialism . The first multi-national corporations were founded to set up colonial "factories" or port cities. The two main examples were the British East India Company founded in 1600 and

8960-570: The day before the event. Shopee was investigated by the Department of Trade and Industry for the incident. In April 2021, Shopee faced allegations that it was underpaying its couriers in Indonesia after some riders claimed publicly that their pay per delivered package was reduced by the company to US$ 0.10 per package, down from US$ 0.34 in the previous year. Couriers that serve Shopee Express deliveries were also not paid basic monthly salaries, though there

9088-657: The debate from a neo-liberal perspective in Storm over the Multinationals (1977). Meme A meme ( / m iː m / ; MEEM ) is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols, or practices, that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena with

9216-430: The difficulty involved in delimiting memes as discrete units. She notes that while the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony ( listen ) form a meme widely replicated as an independent unit, one can regard the entire symphony as a single meme as well. The inability to pin an idea or cultural feature to quantifiable key units is widely acknowledged as a problem for memetics. It has been argued however that

9344-732: The environmental context in which they exist rather than in any special source or manner to their origination. Balkin describes racist beliefs as "fantasy" memes that become harmful or unjust "ideologies" when diverse peoples come together, as through trade or competition. Richard Dawkins called for a re-analysis of religion in terms of the evolution of self-replicating ideas apart from any resulting biological advantages they might bestow. As an enthusiastic Darwinian, I have been dissatisfied with explanations that my fellow-enthusiasts have offered for human behaviour. They have tried to look for 'biological advantages' in various attributes of human civilization. For instance, tribal religion has been seen as

9472-409: The excessive instability of the meme mutation mechanism (that of an idea going from one brain to another), which would lead to a low replication accuracy and a high mutation rate, rendering the evolutionary process chaotic. In his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea , Daniel C. Dennett points to the existence of self-regulating correction mechanisms (vaguely resembling those of gene transcription) enabled by

9600-641: The features common to the most widely practiced religions provide built-in advantages in an evolutionary context, she writes. For example, religions that preach of the value of faith over evidence from everyday experience or reason inoculate societies against many of the most basic tools people commonly use to evaluate their ideas. By linking altruism with religious affiliation, religious memes can proliferate more quickly because people perceive that they can reap societal as well as personal rewards. The longevity of religious memes improves with their documentation in revered religious texts . Aaron Lynch attributed

9728-481: The firm makes direct investments in host country plants for equity ownership and managerial control to avoid some transaction costs . Sanjaya Lall in 1974 proposed a spectrum of scholarly analysis of multinational corporations, from the political right to the left. He put the business school how-to-do-it writers at the extreme right, followed by the liberal laissez-faire economists, and the neoliberals (they remain right of center but do allow for occasional mistakes of

9856-502: The first half of 2022 which is attributed to faster growth in transaction-based fees and advertising income. Coupled with rising inflation and interest rates as well as setbacks in its internationalisation plans, Shopee laid off staff across multiple markets in June 2022, including employees from Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. ShopeePay and ShopeeFood were also reported to be facing cuts. On 15 September 2022, Sea's CEO, Forrest Li , issued

9984-710: The first time, amounting to $ 196.1 million, indicating improvements in revenue and operating costs. In 2023, Shopee introduced the Brand Protection Partnership (BPP) initiative to enhance intellectual property protection for its brand partners. Shopee started as a consumer-to-consumer (C2C) marketplace but it pivoted into a C2C and business-to-consumer (B2C) hybrid model. The company partners with over 70 courier service providers across markets it serves to provide logistical support for users. In Singapore , Shopee collaborates with logistics startup Ninja Van for item pickup and delivery. Other delivery partners in

10112-607: The gene for features such as eye color; it does not select for the individual nucleotide in a strand of DNA . Memes play a comparable role in understanding the evolution of imitated behaviors. Genes, Mind, and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process (1981) by Charles J. Lumsden and E. O. Wilson proposes the theory that genes and culture co-evolve, and that the fundamental biological units of culture must correspond to neuronal networks that function as nodes of semantic memory . Lumsden and Wilson coined their own word, culturgen , which did not catch on. Coauthor Wilson later acknowledged

10240-416: The hands of state-owned companies that operated in one country and sold oil to multinationals such as BP, Shell, ExxonMobil and Chevron. Down through the 1930s, about 80% of the international investments by multinational corporations were concentrated in the primary sector, especially mining (especially oil) and agriculture (rubber, tobacco, sugar, palm oil , coffee, cocoa, and tropical fruits). Most went to

10368-422: The idea that one can meaningfully categorize culture in terms of discrete units, and are especially critical of the biological nature of the theory's underpinnings. Others have argued that this use of the term is the result of a misunderstanding of the original proposal. The word meme itself is a neologism coined by Richard Dawkins , originating from his 1976 book The Selfish Gene . Dawkins's own position

10496-458: The indebtedness believers have to their Savior for sacrifice on the cross. The image of the crucifixion recurs in religious sacraments , and the proliferation of symbols of the cross in homes and churches potently reinforces the wide array of Christian memes. Although religious memes have proliferated in human cultures, the modern scientific community has been relatively resistant to religious belief. Robertson (2007) reasoned that if evolution

10624-566: The international oil market. Iran was unable to sell any of its oil. In August 1953, the then-prime minister was overthrown by a pro-American dictatorship led by the Shah, and in October 1954, the Iranian industry was denationalized. Worldwide oil consumption increased rapidly between 1949 and 1970, a period known as the 'golden age of oil'. This increase in consumption was caused not only by the growth of production by multinational oil companies but also by

10752-415: The internationalization of production. For the first time in history, production, marketing, and investment are being organized on a global scale rather than in terms of isolated national economies. International business is also a specialist field of academic research. Economic theories of the multinational corporation include internalization theory and the eclectic paradigm . The latter is also known as

10880-460: The largest recipients. However, 70% of foreign direct investment went into developed countries in the form of stocks and cash flows. The rise in the number of multinational companies could be due to a stable political environment that encourages cooperation, advances in technology that enable management of faraway regions, and favorable organizational development that encourages business expansion into other countries. A multinational corporation (MNC)

11008-474: The laws and regulations of both their domicile and the additional jurisdictions where they are engaged in business. In some cases, the jurisdiction can help to avoid burdensome laws, but regulatory statutes often target the "enterprise" with statutory language around "control". As of 1992 , the United States and most OECD countries have the donot legal authority to tax a domiciled parent corporation on its worldwide revenue, including subsidiaries. As of 2019 ,

11136-488: The market with cheap oil. This caused a worldwide drop in oil prices, hence the "third oil shock" or "counter-shock." However, this shock represented something much bigger—the end of OPEC's dominance and its control over oil prices. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein decided to attack Kuwait. The invasion sparked a crisis in the Middle East, prompting Saudi Arabia to request assistance from the United States. The United States sent

11264-475: The marketplace such as externalities). Moving to the left side of the line are nationalists, who prioritize national interests over corporate profits, then the "dependencia" school in Latin America that focuses on the evils of imperialism, and on the far left the Marxists. The range is so broad that scholarly consensus is hard to discern. Anti-corporate advocates criticize multinational corporations for being without

11392-598: The media surrounding Internet culture has enabled Internet memetic research to depart in empirical interests from previous memetic goals. Regardless of Internet Memetic's divergence in theoretical interests, it plays a significant role in theorizing and empirically investigating the connection between cultural ideologies, behaviors, and their mediation processes. Memes, analogously to genes, vary in their aptitude to replicate; successful memes remain and spread, whereas unfit ones stall and are forgotten. Thus, memes that prove more effective at replicating and surviving are selected in

11520-423: The medium itself has an influence in the meme's evolutionary outcomes. Thus, he refers to the medium as an "interactor" to avoid this determinism. Alternatively, Daniel Dennett suggests that the medium and the idea are not distinct in that memes only exist because of their medium. Dennett argued this in order to remain consistent with his denial of qualia and the notion of materially deterministic evolution which

11648-461: The meme concept counts as a validly disprovable scientific theory. This view regards memetics as a theory in its infancy: a protoscience to proponents, or a pseudoscience to some detractors. One frequent criticism of meme theory looks at the perceived gap in the gene/meme analogy. For example, Luis Benitez-Bribiesca points to the lack of a "code script" for memes (analogous to the DNA of genes), and to

11776-407: The meme pool. Memes first need retention. The longer a meme stays in its hosts, the higher its chances of propagation are. When a host uses a meme, the meme's life is extended. The reuse of the neural space hosting a certain meme's copy to host different memes is the greatest threat to that meme's copy. A meme that increases the longevity of its hosts will generally survive longer. On the contrary,

11904-606: The memes of transmission in Christianity as especially powerful in scope. Believers view the conversion of non-believers both as a religious duty and as an act of altruism. The promise of heaven to believers and threat of hell to non-believers provide a strong incentive for members to retain their belief. Lynch asserts that belief in the Crucifixion of Jesus in Christianity amplifies each of its other replication advantages through

12032-431: The most familiar features of ideological thought. His theory of "cultural software" maintained that memes form narratives , social networks, metaphoric and metonymic models, and a variety of different mental structures. Balkin maintains that the same structures used to generate ideas about free speech or free markets also serve to generate racistic beliefs. To Balkin, whether memes become harmful or maladaptive depends on

12160-481: The noted music and dance forms), which, according to meme theory, should have resulted in those forms of cultural expression going extinct. A second common criticism of meme theory views it as a reductionist and inadequate version of more accepted anthropological theories. Kim Sterelny and Paul Griffiths noted the cumulative evolution of genes depends on biological selection-pressures neither too great nor too small in relation to mutation-rates, while pointing out there

12288-490: The notion of meme as a kernel of cultural imitation while emphasizing the meme's evolutionary aspect, defining the meme as "the least unit of sociocultural information relative to a selection process that has favorable or unfavorable selection bias that exceeds its endogenous tendency to change". The meme as a unit provides a convenient means of discussing "a piece of thought copied from person to person", regardless of whether that thought contains others inside it, or forms part of

12416-634: The platform would introduce Toni Gonzaga as its brand ambassador a day after the company's reported massive layoff. This was confirmed the following day at a press conference. While various reasons were pointed for the backlash from the ethical issues with getting a highly-paid endorser to the endorsers' political activities, Gonzaga only appeared on the company's platform for a total of ten days before introducing another endorser for their 11.11 campaign, businessman and singer Jose Mari Chan . In 2022, Shopee had to lay off 600 people which amounted to 3% of its employees. Multinational corporation Most of

12544-560: The price collapse in 1998–1999. The United States still maintains close relations with Saudi Arabia. In 2003, U.S. forces invaded Iraq with the aim of removing the dictatorship and gaining access to Iraqi oil reserves, giving the United States greater strategic importance from 2000 to 2008. During this period, there was a constant shortage of oil, but its consumption continued to rise, maintaining high prices and leading to concerns about "peak oil". From 2005 to 2012, there were advances in oil and gas extraction, leading to increased production in

12672-463: The process by which memes survive and change through the evolution of culture to the natural selection of genes in biological evolution . Dawkins noted that in a society with culture a person need not have biological descendants to remain influential in the actions of individuals thousands of years after their death: But if you contribute to the world's culture, if you have a good idea...it may live on, intact, long after your genes have dissolved in

12800-570: The propagation of a taboo . Memetics is the name of the field of science that studies memes and their evolution and culture spread. While the term "meme" appeared in various forms in German and Austrian texts near the turn of the 20th century, Dawkin's unrelated use of the term in The Selfish Gene marked its emergence into mainstream study. Based on the Dawkin's framing of a meme as a cultural analogue to

12928-414: The properties necessary for evolution, and thus sees meme evolution as not simply analogous to genetic evolution, but as a real phenomenon subject to the laws of natural selection . Dawkins noted that as various ideas pass from one generation to the next, they may either enhance or detract from the survival of the people who obtain those ideas, or influence the survival of the ideas themselves. For example,

13056-464: The quarter also rose by 28.6% to US $ 23.1 billion. In June 2019, #ShopeeScam trended on Twitter after Shopee released a promotion in the Philippines that offered passes to a meet-and-greet with Blackpink for the top 568 spenders in their online store. Several fans reported receiving notifications that they had won tickets, but which were unilaterally retracted afterward by Shopee. Others posted screenshots that showed Shopee changing their contest mechanics

13184-595: The realities of the needs of source materials on a worldwide basis and to produce and customize products for individual countries. One of the first multinational business organizations, the East India Company , was established in 1601. After the East India Company came the Dutch East India Company , founded on March 20, 1603, which would become the largest company in the world for nearly 200 years. The main characteristics of multinational companies are: When

13312-495: The redundancy and other properties of most meme expression languages which stabilize information transfer. Dennett notes that spiritual narratives, including music and dance forms, can survive in full detail across any number of generations even in cultures with oral tradition only. In contrast, when applying only meme theory, memes for which stable copying methods are available will inevitably get selected for survival more often than those which can only have unstable mutations (such as

13440-478: The region include Pos Malaysia and Pos Indonesia . Shopee also partnered with Delhivery and Ecom Express for deliveries in India before it exited the domestic market. In its early phases of growth, Shopee offered subsidies and free shipping to its users although delivery services were still expensive in the areas it serves. Shopee had also received extreme international attention in 2019 after signing Portuguese and Juventus superstar Cristiano Ronaldo to be

13568-499: The robustness of religious memes in human culture to the fact that such memes incorporate multiple modes of meme transmission. Religious memes pass down the generations from parent to child and across a single generation through the meme-exchange of proselytism . Most people will hold the religion taught them by their parents throughout their life. Many religions feature adversarial elements, punishing apostasy , for instance, or demonizing infidels . In Thought Contagion Lynch identifies

13696-475: The same pressures of evolution as were biological attributes was discussed in the time of Charles Darwin. T. H. Huxley (1880) claimed that "The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals." In 1904, Richard Semon published Die Mneme (which appeared in English in 1924 as The Mneme ). The term mneme

13824-481: The sense that there are no two instances of exactly the same cultural idea, all that can be argued is that there is material mimicry of an idea. Thus every instance of a "meme" would not be a true evolutionary unit of replication. Dan Deacon, Kalevi Kull separately argued memes are degenerate Signs in that they offer only a partial explanation of the triadic in Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotic theory:

13952-535: The senses. Initially, Dawkins did not seriously give context to the material of memetics. He considered a meme to be an idea, and thus a mental concept. However, from Dawkins' initial conception, it is how a medium might function in relation to the meme which has garnered the most attention. For example, David Hull suggested that while memes might exist as Dawkins conceives of them, he finds it important to suggest that instead of determining them as idea "replicators" (i.e. mind-determinant influences) one might notice that

14080-483: The spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in Dawkins' book include melodies , catchphrases , fashion, and the technology of building arches. Although Richard Dawkins invented the term meme and developed meme theory, he has not claimed that the idea was entirely novel, and there have been other expressions for similar ideas in the past. For instance, the possibility that ideas were subject to

14208-495: The strong influence of the United States on the global oil market. In 1959, companies lowered the price of oil due to a surplus in the market. This reduction dealt a significant blow to the finances of producers. Saudi oil minister Abdullah Tariki and Venezuela’s Juan Perez Alfonso entered into a secret agreement (the Mahdi Pact), promising that if the price of oil was lowered a second time, they would take collective action against

14336-428: The subjects with autism—who lack the degree of inferential capacity normally associated with aspects of theory of mind —came close to functioning as "meme machines". In his book The Robot's Rebellion , Keith Stanovich uses the memes and memeplex concepts to describe a program of cognitive reform that he refers to as a "rebellion". Specifically, Stanovich argues that the use of memes as a descriptor for cultural units

14464-407: The term meme as the best label for the fundamental unit of cultural inheritance in his 1998 book Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge , which elaborates upon the fundamental role of memes in unifying the natural and social sciences . At present, the existence of discrete cultural units which satisfy memetic theory has been challenged in a variety of ways. What is critical from this perspective

14592-544: The term to refer to any cultural entity that an observer might consider a replicator . He hypothesized that one could view many cultural entities as replicators, and pointed to melodies, fashions and learned skills as examples. Memes generally replicate through exposure to humans, who have evolved as efficient copiers of information and behavior. Because humans do not always copy memes perfectly, and because they may refine, combine or otherwise modify them with other memes to create new memes, they can change over time. Dawkins likened

14720-693: The total GMV of the Southeast Asian market. The platform also facilitates online buying and selling for consumers and sellers in East Asia and Latin America. Shopee was established in Singapore in February 2015 as a mobile-focused marketplace that enables users to browse, shop, and sell products. The platform integrates logistical and payment support to facilitate transactions and is designed to operate with minimal physical assets. To enhance its competitive stance against other e-commerce companies, Shopee also launched

14848-528: The traces of memetic processing can be quantified utilizing neuroimaging techniques which measure changes in the "connectivity profiles between brain regions". Blackmore meets such criticism by stating that memes compare with genes in this respect: that while a gene has no particular size, nor can we ascribe every phenotypic feature directly to a particular gene, it has value because it encapsulates that key unit of inherited expression subject to evolutionary pressures. To illustrate, she notes evolution selects for

14976-416: The welfare of their hosts. A field of study called memetics arose in the 1990s to explore the concepts and transmission of memes in terms of an evolutionary model . Criticism from a variety of fronts has challenged the notion that academic study can examine memes empirically . However, developments in neuroimaging may make empirical study possible. Some commentators in the social sciences question

15104-470: The work of geneticist L. L. Cavalli-Sforza , anthropologist F. T. Cloak, and ethologist J. M. Cullen. Dawkins wrote that evolution depended not on the particular chemical basis of genetics, but only on the existence of a self-replicating unit of transmission—in the case of biological evolution, the gene. For Dawkins, the meme exemplified another self-replicating unit with potential significance in explaining human behavior and cultural evolution. Dawkins used

15232-484: The world market, jobs for locals, and business and profits for companies. Cecil Rhodes (1853–1902) was one of the few businessmen in the era who became Prime Minister (of South Africa 1890–1896). His mining enterprises included the British South Africa Company and De Beers . The latter company practically controlled the global diamond market from its base in southern Africa. In 1945, the United States

15360-573: The world without a concentration in one area have been called stateless or "transnational" (although "transnational corporation" is also used synonymously with "multinational corporation" ), but as of 1992, a corporation must be legally domiciled in a particular country and engage in other countries through foreign direct investment and the creation of foreign subsidiaries. Geographic diversification can be measured across various domains, including ownership and control, workforce, sales, and regulation and taxation. Multinational corporations may be subject to

15488-503: The worldwide revenue of a foreign subsidiary, and taxation is complicated by transfer pricing arrangements with parent corporations. For small corporations, registering a foreign subsidiary can be expensive and complex, involving fees, signatures, and forms; a professional employer organization (PEO) is sometimes advertised as a cheaper and simpler alternative, but not all jurisdictions have laws accepting these types of arrangements. Disputes between corporations in different nations

15616-626: Was also used in Maurice Maeterlinck 's The Life of the White Ant (1926), with some parallels to Dawkins's concept. Kenneth Pike had, in 1954, coined the related terms emic and etic , generalizing the linguistic units of phoneme , morpheme , grapheme , lexeme , and tagmeme (as set out by Leonard Bloomfield ), distinguishing insider and outside views of communicative behavior. The word meme originated with Richard Dawkins ' 1976 book The Selfish Gene . Dawkins cites as inspiration

15744-459: Was consistent with Dawkins' account. A particularly more divergent theory is that of Limor Shifman , a communication and media scholar of " Internet memetics ". She argues that any memetic argument which claims the distinction between the meme and the meme-vehicle (i.e. the meme's medium) are empirically observable is mistaken from the offset. Shifman claims to be following a similar theoretical direction as Susan Blackmore ; however, her attention to

15872-438: Was enabled by multinational corporations known as the 'Seven Sisters'. The "Seven Sisters" was a common term for the seven multinational companies that dominated the global petroleum industry from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s. The nationalization of the Iranian oil industry in 1951 by Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and the subsequent boycott of Iranian oil by all companies had dramatic consequences for Iran and

16000-448: Was fully aware that the means to overcoming cultural resistance depended on an "understanding" of the countries in which a corporation operated. He observed that companies with "foresight to capitalize on international opportunities" must recognize that " cultural anthropology will be an important tool for competitive marketing". However, the projected outcome of this was not the assimilation of international firms into national cultures, but

16128-546: Was labeled as "the largest nonviolent transfer of wealth in human history." The OPEC sought immediate discussions regarding participation in national oil industries. Companies were not inclined to object as the price hike benefited both them and OPEC members. In 1980, the Seven Sisters were entirely displaced and replaced by national oil companies (NOCs). The rise in oil prices burdened developing countries with balance of payments deficits, leading to an energy crisis. OPEC members had to abandon their plan of redistributing wealth from

16256-506: Was the top shopping platform for Indonesian mothers, with 73% preferring it over other platforms. Despite Shopee's reported GMV growth, these claims faced criticism. Lazada's former CEO, Max Bittner, asserted that GMV numbers could be inflated through subsidy schemes and that GMV tends to decline once such subsidies are removed. Shopee was recognized as top shopping app in Q2 2019 based on monthly active users, total downloads, and website visits, as per

16384-503: Was the world's largest oil producer. However, their reserves were declining due to high demand. Therefore, the United States turned to foreign oil sources, which had a significant impact on the recovery of the West after World War II. Most of the world's oil was found in Latin America and the Middle East, particularly in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. This increase in non-American production

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