Bringing Nuance into the Globalization Debate: Changes in US, Japanese, and German Management, with Special Reference to the Impact of International Finance

Abstract

This study presents the results of an application of an extended version of grounded theory to bring nuance into the globalization debate by looking at changes in US, Japanese, and German management, with special reference to the impact of international finance. It starts out by presenting the core of the preconceptions with which I started my research, represented by reconstructions of three perspectives that were highly popular and influential in the financial globalization debate at the end of the 1980s and during the 1990s. Next, well-substantiated, systematized, and synthesized empirical and theoretical material from many different sources is presented with which the three perspectives are compared. On the basis of the findings, the study concludes that the three perspectives cannot reasonably be upheld. More generally, the study indicates different sources of causality that more or less contradict each other and that lead to some kind of transformation. The main channels through which financial globalization is hypothesized to impact on management practices are the possibility of offshore outsourcing, financial deregulation, foreign shareholdings, the way attempts to improve global competitiveness have been affected by international finance, and management practices of MNCs. The pressures resulting from financial globalization are interpreted to be to some extent resisted by domestic power constellations, while for many changes the relation to financial globalization is unclear. In all three countries, a number of ‘neo-liberal’ practices has become more common. But some cultural adaptation appears to have occurred, while certain practices may already have been common in Japan and Germany. In addition, elements of Japanese management have been introduced in the US and Germany while universal banking has been introduced in the US and Japan. For management practices of MNCs, a mixture of home- and host-country practices is found together with some cultural adaptation. A case study of management practices in Japanese MNCs in the US also finds a mixture of home- and host-country practices.