Organizing for worldwide effectiveness

Organizing for worldwide effectiveness - Christopher A. Barlett, Sumantra Ghoshal
Companies that are unable to gain strategic control of their worldwide operation and manage them in a globally coordinated manner will not succeed in the international economy.

There are two main strategies when going international, each one represent an extreme in a trade-off between adapting to local need and global coordination and control.

- A network of self-sufficient and fairly independent national subsidies (Western style).

- Centralized hub with operation concentrated in the home market (Asian style).

Common belief has it that a company can freely choose between one or the other while, in fact, a company is constrained by its heritage (culture, norms, values, management style, assets, etc.). Therefore, the issue is not so much to find a magic recipe but rather to discover how to leverage the company's existing capabilities. There are lessons to be learned from other but blind imitation cannot be the answer.