ABSTRACT
During the first four chapters of this book, we have discussed how important it is to understand business and management from an international perspective. As noted earlier, one of the dominant trends in the development of modern economies is the increased ‘globalization’ of business, though as some writers have pointed out, this trend is the subject of a number of myths and misunderstandings (Mendenhall and Oddou, 2000). Leaving aside its economic and cultural impact, globalization has a significant influence on how we manage, not only in multinational enterprises (MNEs) but also in our home-based companies as, increasingly, we borrow ideas on ‘best practice’ from companies in the advanced industrialized countries. Much of this borrowing has come from US-based companies that are headlined in the international business press and much of the US-based academic literature as models of excellence. Some researchers have argued, however, that US companies, partly because of the US government’s generally isolationist approach to world affairs throughout much of its history (at least until the Second World War), are among the least well-equipped organizations to conduct effective global management in a multinational context. Moreover, they may also be among the most reluctant ‘globalizers’. For example, although US companies feature heavily in the world’s largest firms by revenue, no US company features in the OECD’s top ten of transnational companies, as measured by the proportions of revenue earned and employees outside the USA (Whittington, 2000). At a more prosaic, though no less important level, it has been pointed out that, during the 1990s, only 50 per cent of US senators held passports, a figure that should come as no surprise since 90 per cent of ordinary US citizens had no inclination to travel abroad, at least as measured by those who held valid travel documents.
