The International Executive

American Business Abroad: Ford on Six Continents documents the first sixty years of Ford Motor Company’s international expansion. Ford Motor Company introduced Americans to the first affordable car. Based on Ford’s extraordinary company archives, this book traces the company’s rise as a multinational enterprise. Following the export of the sixth car produced by the company, Ford opened its first plant abroad in its second year of business and quickly expanded around the world, building a business that by the mid 1920s spanned six continents. It faced wars, nationalism, numerous government restrictions and all the perils of operating across borders. First published in 1964, this book has lasting value in reminding readers of the long and uneven path of globalization. It is a major contribution to global economic history. In addition, Ford’s history offers useful lessons today for both participants in the global economy and students of international business.

Despite the increased literature attention on marketing in the Third World, debate persists as to the applicability of marketing know-how in Third World countries. To help shed light on the debate, this article investigates the perceived usefulness of marketing concepts, and the incidence and regularity of performance of marketing management activities in Third-World corporate contexts. The results indicate that not only are marketing concepts perceived as useful but also the incidence and regularity of performance of marketing-management activities is high—thus implying the “applicability” of marketing know-how. The results, however, suggest that corporate and country factors influence the applicability ofmarketing know-how.

Little has been recorded on trade between Eastern Europe and the United States, and there has been little penetration of U.S. markets by Eastern European manufacturers. The study reported in this article set out to enquire whether the process of detente might lead to a growth in imports of industrial goods from Eastern Europe by the U.S., or whether buyer attitudes were likely to inhibit this. It concludes that buyers have very negative attitudes towards Eastern European manufacturing sources, and, so far as could be determined, this applied whether or not the purchaser has experience of buying from Eastern Europe. Manufacturers in these countries, it is suggested, must develop, through high profile marketing, much more positive images, if they are to succeed in the U.S. market.

Banking regulation and supervision in the EU today has to be conducted in accordance with the Single Market legislation promulgated by the European Commission. The creation of a European Single Market in financial services, which was provided for in the Treaty of Rome of 1957 and in the Single European Act of July 1987 which revised it, was originally planned for completion by the end of 1992, although the final pieces of the jigsaw were not in place until the beginning of 1996. This article explains what the European Single Market in financial services represents, the rationale for it, and the measures, including the use of legally binding Directives, adopted to deliver it on the banking front. It concludes with a discussion and analysis of some of the issues and concerns which implementation of the Single Market program for banking services has given rise to, with special emphasis being placed on the evolution of minimum capital standards for banks.

Little information is available on the current practices of cash and foreign-exchange management by companies—especially outside the United States. The purpose of this survey was to investigate responsibilities and practices of international cash management. Although the survey had a much broader scope, this article addresses six important issues with regard to cash and foreign-exchange management: policy and responsibility, centralization versus decentralization, cash-flow planning and foreign-exchange forecasting, banking relationships and cash management services, hedging translation and transaction exposures, conflicts with other departments. Although the size of the sample is too small to permit statistically significant conclusions, some interesting findings can be drawn from this study.

Students of the labor market have long been aware that differences in institutional settings and basic value patterns account in part for differences in the levels and incidence of labor mobility. In studies of labor markets in a single country, even one as large and industrially diversified as the United States, the influence of such factors on worker mobility and job attitudes tends to be obscured by the basic cultural homogeneity of the groups studied. Comparative studies of labor market behavior in a variety of industrially similar countries should reveal the extent to which institutional and normative factors affect mobility, and several such studies by American scholars are now in progress or planned for the near future. This article is a report of an exploratory survey in several northern European countries of patterns of labor mobility and workers' and employers' labor market behavior. In addition, the author also describes some of the research that has been undertaken abroad and indicates some topics on which comparative research should enlarge our understanding of how labor markets function. (Author's abstract courtesy EBSCO.)

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether international operations have a discernible effect on the financing policies of U.S.- based firms. Results obtained indicate that firms with notable foreign involvement have target leverage ratios significantly below those of their domestic counterparts. It is also found that multinationals secure a greater portion of their borrowing from short-term sources. These results are rationalized in terms of the market imperfections that the multinationals face and/or exploit.

Using data from a sample of 329 multinational firms, this paper analyses the impact of increases in foreign production on exports from the parent firm. The relationship between internal exports and foreign production is positive at all feasible levels of foreign production, although the impact on extra-group exports may be negative. These effects may be swamped by changes in relative international competitiveness between firms of the same nationality and industry group. The importance of these findings for multinational firms is that anticipation of these effects can reduce costs of reallocation of resources for the parent, firm and the results illustrate the wide remaining scope for further internationalization even among the world's largest firms. The impact of foreign production on home country employment is likely to remain positive so long as the firm's international competiveness can be improved.

This paper reports the findings of a preliminary investigation of the relationships between the export performance and behavior of firms and the search for market information by the principal international marketing executives of these firms. The first part of the study deals with acquiring objective market information, and the second part is concerned with the acquisition of experiential market knowledge. While the findings of the experiential portion are inconclusive, the use of learning theory in this aspect of the work provides direction for future research in this area.

The genesis of international business in Africa from 1947 to 1996 is traced to colonial times. The article analyzes the dynamics and observes that international business in Africa witnessed growth but has not meaningfully influenced Africa's general economic development because of constraints: poor infrastructure, lack of maintenance culture, inadequate funding, debt burden and overemphasis on export of raw materials instead of manufactured goods. The article suggests placing a greater emphasis on the development of intermediate and capital goods industries and granting debt relief to all African countries as a means of further promoting international business entente in Africa.

This paper examines the production and political responses of the Big Three auto assemblers to the penetration of the North American market by Japanese auto assemblers over the 1955-95 period, using the technological competition model to analyze three successive challenges faced by the Big Three: import competition (1955-73), surplus capacity (1973-83), and transplant production (1983-95). We argue that the US auto makers first responded with intensification strategies and then by rationalizing production. These production strategies, together with lobbying for favorable US government policies, were unsuccessful in stemming import penetration. It was only after the Japanese firms began onshore production that the Big Three understood the competitive challenge-the need to shift from mass to lean production-and began to transform their auto operations.

The United States has dominated the global commercial class aircraft industry for decades. The sector has been considered strategic because of its contribution to both the economic base and the military needs of a country. Government intervention has been a hallmark of the industry almost since its inception. Changes in industry dynamics triggered, in part, by foreign and domestic public policies-both directly and indirectly aimed at this sector– have lead to the proliferation of internationalized production structures, replacing the traditional domestic structures of the past. Global outsourcing, transnational joint ventures, and foreign investment have contributed to the globalization of the industry.

This article examines the improved competitiveness of the U.S. carbon steel industry, a sector that has suffered extreme economic difficulty over the last three decades. The article argues that despite the lack of a coherent national steel policy, the US steel industry has significantly increased its competitiveness relative to foreign steel competitors. Four reasons stand out. First and foremost, domestic minimills have provided intense competition for the domestic integrated sector. Secondly, the falling value of the dollar has improved the international position of all US steel firms. Thirdly, US labor costs have been reduced sharply, both through wage concessions by the United Steelworkers and massive layoffs. Finally, joint ventures with Japanese firms have provided traditional firms with cash and new technical innovations.

This article recounts various Japanese business approaches touted in the 1980s as “Lessons from Japan” for U.S. managers. The logical expectation, given the sheer bulk of the literature, was that U.S. managers would become more “Japanese” in their business strategies and goals while the Japanese would have become more entrenched in their approaches. Questionnaire responses from 95 Japanese and 70 American firms suggest, however, that U.S. managers tend to make few shifts from the strategies and goals they emphasized in the 1980s. Meanwhile Japanese managers report that they expect to move toward more “American” business practices. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The changes that Europe has seen in the past few years—the growing reality of a unified EC, the reforms in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and the results of economic and political events from outside—have opened up new opportunities and created new challenges. Perhaps the most important result of “Europe '92” will be its ability to spur on a new era of innovation and entrepreneurship whose effects will be felt around the globe.

Job insecurity is a societal problem of global concern that is not likely to abate in the foreseeable future. The proportion of the population subjected to some degree of job insecurity is considerably larger than the number of workers who actually experience job loss. To date, the problem, despite its damaging consequences, has not been adequately studied. In particular, scholars have ignored the impact of the external environment. This leaves open a field of interesting questions concerning the relationships between cultural and other factors and the experience of job insecurity. Such factors may have important effects on the way individuals respond to job insecurity in different countries. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.