Comments on: Does Corporate Nationality Matter?

By: matt

matt — Sat, 02 May 2009 16:18:18 +0000

corporate nationality is of minor significance to the larger question of governance. when we have weak governance structures albeited by deregulation the world devolves into a race for the bottom.

By: steve

steve — Sat, 02 May 2009 02:18:57 +0000

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood awarded $75 million in federal money Thursday to expand Portland’s streetcar system, a decision that elated local officials who have long supported the stalled project and signaled a new national embrace of urban transit.

The federal government’s money and blessing removes the last and most stubborn barrier to expanding the line east of the Willamette River and unleashes an already approved pot of $55 million from local governments and another $20 million from state lottery bonds.

The expansion means jobs — not only for construction to expand the streetcar system by three miles and 18 stations, but also for manufacturing the streetcars, which will be built by United Streetcar, a subsidiary of Oregon Iron Works, in Clackamas.

The new loop is expected to begin service in 2011.

In announcing the money Thursday, LaHood lauded the design and purpose of a project that had been repeatedly blocked by the Bush administration. In the new administration, LaHood said, Portland can be a model for other cities moving to create or expand mass transit.

By: Miles

Miles — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:55:49 +0000

I agree that the quality of management is much more relevant to performance than corporate nationality. But that begs the question: how is the quality of management itself gauged?

Sure, the market is an equal-opportunity offender, but it is only a reactive mechanism that punishes bad performance. As management decisions are being made, however, I have little doubt that the nationality and sensibility of a company’s decision-makers have a lot to do with the quality of those decisions.

Corporate nationality may not matter in the end, but it may have a lot of influence on what that end will look like.

By: Jonathan Reimer

Jonathan Reimer — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:12:40 +0000

Richard, this is an interesting point that has been raised for many years, particularly in the case of the oil industry. Looking at the case of Shell, we see fine lines between the placement of British and Dutch nationals in key executive management conditions. Interestingly, large Swiss companies have always had a high foreign contingent on BoD and executive management teams.

Rob van Tulder’s book “The Logic of International Restructuring, The Management of Dependencies in Rival Industrial Complexes” is absolutely essential in this field and reveals much of what you are talking about. If I remember correctly, the extent to which a company “globalizes” its management rank is determined by where its’ key economies are; if an American company largely relies on the domestic market, it will have a largely American BoD or executive management team. A large Swiss company will typically have a very international team given the relatively small size of the domestic market.

While by no means is the book strictly about this, it covers these points (it’s been years since I read it). It really goes over all of this though; such as how the expansion of R&D activity to international settings often represents the final phase of a company truly becoming global, or trans-national. Great book.