ABSTRACT
Positioning The theme of globalization permeates Pankaj Ghemawat’s work. In “Distance Still Matters” and related publications, he argues that the world is not as flat as Thomas Friedman suggested in his bestselling book The World is Flat. If the world were truly flat (in the figurative sense of being economically and culturally homogenous), Ghemawat points out, foreign direct investments would have accounted for a far greater percentage of global investments than the mere 10% they represented at the time.1 Arguing against Friedman’s thesis, Ghemawat calls his view “globaloney,” and suggests that global companies should pay careful attention to regional differences and modify their strategy accordingly. Most of Ghemawat’s writing has been devoted to investigating the challenges of designing successful regional strategies while working within existing, and often inflexibly centralized, organizational structures.
