ABSTRACT
Moreover, gestation periods occur more often in the British owned subsid iaries. Although there are two exceptionally prolonged gestation periods in US-H 4 and 5 , both were due to the specific difficulties in overcoming or circumventing strong external opposed interests. The decision to stay out of a certain market was reaffirmed despite persistent American head office pressure to go in, and the decision to bypass wholesalers had to await it becoming possible to ignore them and their long connections with US-H. These two decisions are the exceptions. Far more often there are no gestation periods in the American owned subsidiaries, and they not only go right ahead with a decision process once the matter is raised but they then despatch it twice as fast, as Eggars (1 9 7 7 ) surely believed they would.
