[揽瓜阁精读] 317. multinational company

小白斩鸡

想带着大家每天坚持读英语，就拿来Source为WSY的文章（有500多篇），每天带着大家读，希望大家能坚持每天学习+阅读打卡；

大家可以在有限时间内阅读，本帖回复文章结构。
看不懂英语的，可以来微信群要我要中文

每日的中文大意在揽瓜阁阅读群更新


考试群：
GMAT入群／揽瓜阁入群方式：https://forum.chasedream.com/thread-1382779-1-1.html

公众号：1.考什么试
2.商校百科

申请群

1. ChaseDream 2023 MBA 申请／校友答疑／面试群：

https://forum.chasedream.com/thread-863011-1-1.html
2.英国，新加坡，美国，香港，德国商科申请群：
请加小白斩鸡进群（killgmat）
3. 行业分享交流／职业规划群：
https://forum.chasedream.com/thread-1388171-1-1.html

小红书：
1.留学+考试 最新消息 关注妥妥妥了 （小红书号：323014154）
2.求职+MBA 最新消息 关注元（小红书号：895404330)









HAVING spent a decade in feverish re~ organisation, downsizing, de-layer-ing. re-engineering and so on, many companies are having to cast around for a new source of competitive advantage. Repetitive slimming can, after all. turn into debilitating anorexia. And as they ask what positive strategies they should try next. a striking number are coming up with the same answer: “globalisation".

Come again? As a slogan. globalisation is the stalest of buns. Lenin made a living complaining about it a century ago. In the 19605 every American firm worth its salt talked about being a "multinational". In the 1980s “globalisation" was a buzzword that launched a thousand strategies. For years. management gurus have pontificated on “the borderless corporation.“ Yet today's globalising firms are much more significant than their predecessors. for two reasons.

One is that there are so many of them. The number of “transnational corporations" in the world‘s 14 richest cottntries has more than tripled in the past 25 years. from 7,000 in 1969 to 24.000 today. according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. The world now boasts a total of 37.000 transnational companies, which control about a third ofall private»sector assets. and enjoy worldwide sales of about $5.5 trillionaslightly less than America's GDP last year. American firms‘ revenues from manufacturing abroad are now twice their export earnings.

This all adds up to an impressive array of dots on the map. Yet many dots may be no more than distribution or assembly points for products manufactured in the home country. The second thing that is different about the current round of globalisation could change this. Its aim is to pit all a firm's resources, wherever they are. against its competitors. That means not only moving production facilities around to benefit from the quickest brains or the cheapest hands. but also breaking down internal barriers to the free movement of people and. particularly. of ideas.

The “multicultural multinational". as some are calling this new animal, is based on two ideas about modern business life.First. that innovation is the key to success. An organisation that relies on one culture for its ideas and treats foreign subsidiaries as dumb production-colonies might as well hire subcontractors. Second, that technology is slowly making the world seem smaller. It is now possible for software writers in Bangalore and Palo Alto to work together on programs, even if the programs then have to be specially tailored for local markets.

This has big implications for company management. AT&T admits that global reorganization accounted for most of the colossal $347m it paid in fees to consultants last year. Gillette. an American consumer-goods firm, likens its new global management system to operating in “over 500 states". Ford has just embarked on a colossal plan to turn itself into a borderless firm.

Matsushita's president. Yoichi Morishita. recently warned the Japanese electronics giant‘s managers that in order “to become a truly global company, we have to have diversity in top management". Sony now aims to give the top job in each of its subsidiaries to a manager from the host country; since 1989 it has appointed three foreigners to its board of directors.

European firms have done better. But they are also more realistic about their progress. “There are very few multicultural multinationals: the truly global multicultural company does not yet exist.“ David dc Pury. co-chairman of Asea Brown Boveri (A1313), a Swedish-Swiss electrical-engineering giant. flatly informed a recent international management symposium at St Gallen in Switzerland. He pointed out that few multinationals produce more than 20“u of their goods and services outside their immediate or wider home market: that most boards come predominantly from one culture; and that few multinationals are ready to let their shareholder base become as global as their business.

This dismissal is the more striking in coming from ABB, a firm with a board of eight directors from four different nationalities: an executive committee of eight people from five countries; English as its corporate language; and financial results reported in dollars. Perhaps only Royal Dutch/Shell—another European giant of mixed parentage. which has some 38 nationalities in its London head office—can claim to have ad vanced so far down the multicultural route. What chance is there then for big American or japanese firms that think globalisation simply means having occasional board meetings in London or Paris?

Lntano

感谢分享！               

yurifromcanada

Mark一下！               

草舟逐波

感谢

Kath_KUI

看一下！               

Yiiiiwanne

1

killgg

感谢分享

joyyy0416

文章结构

5yub

赞

DonkeyG

p1 降低成本已经不再是大部分公司的目标了，需要找到新的优势，引出全球化。
p2 在20世纪已经有过全球化的口号了，但现在更需要，有2点
p3 一就是全球的大型公司越来越多了，美国制造业公司在境外制造的收入是出口的2倍了。
p4 这些变成了遍布全球的点，但也不过都是些组装和分销。第二是，利用全资源去竞争，不仅是动用最快大脑，也要打断内部隔层。
p5 全球跨文化公司是个新物种，基于2方面，1. 创新2. 技术带来的改变。
p6-8 开始说对公司的影响，举例了att、吉列、福特、matsushita、sony，欧洲做的稍微好点，举例了ABB，abb说大部分公司还是伪全球化，还是某一文化主宰。
p9 可能只有shell做的比较好，都是来自各个文化背景。调侃了一下美国和日本什么时候才能实现真正的全球化，而不是在伦敦开个会。