Managing Across Borders: New Strategic Requirements
International businesses faced new strategic challenges in the 1980s. Corporations that had once succeeded with relatively one-dimensional strategies -- efficiency, responsiveness, or ability to exploit learning -- were forced to broaden their outlook. Successful "transnational" corporations integrated all three of those characteristics. They did so by building on the strengths -- but accepting the limitations -- of their administrative heritages. This is the first of two articles; the second will describe how actual companies made that transition.