ABSTRACT
Since 1970 the world economic environment has experienced considerable changes. This has become manifest through frequent alternations in currency exchange rates, interest rates and commodity prices. The latter have led industrial organisations to make decisions increasingly frequent with respect to changes in investments, stocks, wages and labour requirements (Hamilton 1984). These trends converged and intensified to make global restructuring a necessity towards the end of the 1970s. These changes are especially noticeable in the traditional capital goods industries such as transport, building, factory equipment, shipbuilding and steel industry.
