ABSTRACT
Conversations between those who contend with the practical and theoretical obstacles of cross-national comparative research sometimes refer wistfully to an ideal study in which the organizations to be compared are perfectly matched. One ideal is where in comparing, for instance, firms in Japan, the United States, and other countries there would be an exact correspondence of Japanese firms in Japan and Japanese owned subsidiaries in the United States with American firms in the United States and American owned subsidiaries in Japan, and so on. In successive analyzes the apparent effects of national location, and of ownership, could then be controlled and anything due to elements in the national ways of life be more clearly exposed.
