The evolution of multinational companies, Turkey in perspective

Multinational Companies, which have used the globalization effectively, have become one of the most important actors in today?s world economy. Not only they have important impacts on the new world system, which has been started to be established in the post world war II, but also they have had important impact on the world economy since 2500 BC. There is not a generally accepted scale or measurement method, which differentiate and classify separately multinational companies from the other companies in the literature. Being unable to make a clear classification of the companies according to their multinational characteristics provides confusion and obstacles to evaluate performance of the companies. It is academically impossible to cluster and categorize companies as multinational, international or global companies in the present world.In order to measure and evaluate the multinationality of the companies, theoretical and historical backgrounds of multinational companies were emphasized then according to the informations, a measurement method was tried to be established by creating a scale which includes 7 dimensions such as score keeping, financial policy, manufacturing sourcing, new product development policy, structure, operating style and research and development location focus. By using this scale, a questionnaire was created and sent to 500 companies, whose headquarters are situated in Turkey, and also were determined by Istanbul Chamber of Industry. According to analysis of the respondents, it is considered that there are multinational companies whose headquarters are situated in Turkey.Key Words:Multinationality, Multinational Companies, International Economy.