ABSTRACT
As currently used, the terms, ‘global business’, ‘global competition’, ‘global company’ and ‘global strategy’ are at best ambiguous and at worst misleading. They have been invoked to describe activities as diverse as:
Establishing a manufacturing operation overseas in an attempt to match the lower labour costs of foreign competitors (e.g. General Electric's production of audio products in Singapore);
Expanding internationally to amortise investment in world-scale plants or to generate funding for a world-class R&D programme (e.g. Japan's computer chip producers);
Rationalising foreign national product lines to take advantage of scale economies in design, purchasing and manufacturing, (e.g. SKF's attempts to reduce the number of national variations in its ball-bearing product line);
Restructuring the organisation to consolidate strategic responsibility for a particular business at headquarters (e.g. General Motors' plans for a new pan-European headquarters).
