Does the cross-border strategic behavior of large firms reflect national differences? There is uncertainty about the ways in which expanding markets will influence the activities of large firms and national governments. Some theorists expect market forces to produce increasing pressure for uniform patterns of behavior, while others have argued that the national political economy is more resilient, and that corporate strategies remain identifiably national. Thus far the question, theoretically and empirically, has been posed in terms of economic behavior and consequences. We analyze the persistence of national practices in the political activities of large corporations using data on the Fortune 1000 industrial and service companies for 1988. To increase the sample of affiliates of foreign firms, we include firms in the Forbes ranking of largest U.S. affiliates of foreign firms. This source includes financial and service corporations as well as those in manufacturing industries. Overall, the findings suggest that, contrary to the national capitalism argument, firms adapt to the host political economy.

The Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) has aggressively and persistently supported technologies key to the personal computer (PC) revolution. Uncovering this political-economic link provides an important corrective to the popular lore surrounding the origins of the PC. In their emphases on private sector initiative and entrepreneurial risk-taking, conventional PC histories conform to orthodox market-based explanations of technological and economic progress. In contradistinction, this article “brings the state back in” to the PC realm of apparent market purity.

Formal regulatory parity can entail counterintuitive effects. In a series of state statutes, municipal governments have been directed to issue cable TV franchises to new competitors only after (a) formal hearings considering the ‘public interest’ in competition; and (b) imposing terms and conditions which are at least as burdensome as those contained in the incumbent's franchise. While billed as ‘level playing field’ laws, economic theory, an important case study in Connecticut, and a probit analysis of Ameritech's cable franchise acquisition strategy suggest that these statutes actually tilt the field against entrants.

Despite recent currency crises, most of the Asia-Pacific economies continue to be among the most attractive markets in the world and now appear to be recovering rapidly. An important element in understanding the dynamics of firm strategies in Asia is the nature of nonmarket strategies, which concern efforts to respond to and influence the political-economic-social environment. To examine such nonmarket strategies and how they fit with other firm tasks, this article first focuses on “positional analysis”—that is, how market forces, firm competencies, and the nonmarket environment influence the choice of trade, investment, or some mix, at the national, regional, or global level. It then considers the nature of “strategic analysis,” consisting of a firm's choices of market arena, a transaction cost analysis of organization forms for market penetration, and a distributive politics analysis of nonmarket issues. These factors combine to influence the firm's integrated strategic choice. Implementation of this choice is based on “tactical analysis” that focuses on the market, organizational, and nonmarket tactics that firms must pursue to succeed with their chosen strategy.

In 1996, the Finnish government initiated an Action Plan aimed at the more effective control of economic crime and the grey economy, involving wide-scale reform in legislation, regulatory agencies, enforcement practice, and research activities. The emergence of this Action Plan forms the empirical focus of this article, which addresses two specific research questions. First, what were the economic, social and political factors that produced this Action Plan? Second, how can this initiative contribute to a critical assessment of the claims of “globalization discourses,” which seem to render such an idiosyncratic nation-state development as unlikely? The article critically examines some of the elements of globalization discourses with particular respect to the implications for the nature of contemporary states and the possibilities for the more effective regulation of corporate activity. It then outlines the processes and events that allowed the Finnish Action Plan to emerge. Finally, it asks what lessons are to be learnt from the Finnish case, before identifying some further lines of enquiry to be pursued. This Finnish initiative seems to represent one important instance of the extent to which states can develop relatively autonomous economic and social policy, even where this appears to be detrimental to the interests of “capital.”

The article discusses the political preferences of diversified business groups—or economic groups (EGs)—based on a case study of business political behavior in Colombia. EGs are groups of firms held together through ‘interlocking directorates, holding companies, crossfinancing, and often continued family ownership’, which dominate significant portions of the Latin American economies. The Colombian EGs supported president Ernesto Samper (1994–1998) amidst accusations that his campaign had been funded by drug traffickers, despite the prospect of U.S. sanctions and economic recession. The article suggests that a crucial factor shaping EG political preferences was their relationship of mutual dependence with the Colombian state, which is based on contracts, credit, and regulation. In contrast to expectations that privatization policies associated with the 1990s' economic reforms would weaken the business-state relationship, this case shows that these ties have been strengthened, making EGs stand out as winners of the reform process.

Software has become one of the central drivers of growth in an expanding global economy. Despite concerted “catch-up” efforts by European and Asian firms and governments alike, few major software players are not American. In particular, European software producers were slow to adapt to the new challenges posed by U.S. firms with standardized software products tied to rapidly innovating computer hardware systems and the Internet. One exception is Germany's SAP, which has quietly managed to become one of the largest software companies in the world. This article examines the market and nonmarket factors that have led to this company's success in both the global and Asian context. First, it will examine how SAP was able to bring the first fully integrated package to corporations around the world and thus to establish a global presence in one of the largest software niche markets, enterprise resource planning software. Second, this study highlights the importance of taking the nonmarket environment into account in Asia. Finally, the article demonstrates how SAP's strategy in Asia was a part of its global plan to simultaneously maximize market share and improve efficiency.

This case, and the accompanying teaching note, is based on extensive interviews in the early months of the year 2000 with many of the participants involved in Global 2000—an organization set up to preempt a possible global business meltdown as a result of the “Millenium Bug.” Global 2000 emerged between November 1997 and April 1998 as a coordinated project among managers at various international banks to monitor suspicious private and public organizations from around the world, engage national and multilateral regulators, and develop and implement a workable strategy to forestall the worst potential consequences of the Year 2000 (Y2K) bug. This project involved maintaining control over a rapidly expanding network, establishing readily implementable procedures, setting incentives for a diverse community of players, and agreeing on effective country assessment charts. If they succeeded, they ran the risk of being criticized for crying wolf; if they failed, the world financial system would be at stake. This article tells the story of Global 2000's efforts to squash the Y2K bug and discusses the lessons of this story for our understanding of issues of collective action, network dynamics, and voluntary compliance.

This article analyzes the early-1980s Israeli bank-share crash at different points of its development to demonstrate the vital contribution of managers' professional and personal ethical norms to a fruitful collaboration between government authorities and the business sector. After presenting the case and discussing pertinent problems of external versus internal business regulation, this article provides a phase model of ethical decisionmaking in business that reconstructs the moral problems faced by the major players and probes appropriate responses to these problems. The application of the model to the bank-share affair shows how different stages in the evolution of the crisis introduce different ethical problems, inviting different moral considerations and calling for different solutions.

Between 1982 and 1994 all fifty states enacted new car warranty legislation commonly known as ‘lemon laws’. These statutes provide that a consumer who buys a lemon (defined as ‘a chronically defective new car that cannot be repaired with a reasonable effort’) is entitled to receive a replacement car or full refund from the car's manufacturer. We ask why these laws were enacted, exploring both economic and political rationales. The analysis demonstrates that reasonable economic arguments can be advanced for the legislation, both pro and con, and concludes that the legislation resulted most directly from an alliance of consumer advocates and automobile dealers at the expense of manufacturers. This case study illustrates the interplay of legal, political, and economic factors that shape consumer legislation generally.

Airbus strategies in Asia operate in an environment shaped by three forces: the technical constraints of building modern aircraft, the demands of world and regional markets, and the structure and objectives of the consortium itself. These factors map onto an integrated strategy analysis. The positional analysis for Airbus must focus on its status as the challenger to the dominant firm, on the consortium's peculiar organizational structure, and on the opportunities and constraints offered by its nonmarket context (multiple national governments plus the European Union). One way of looking at Airbus's experience is as a continual series of disruptions aimed at creating openings for Airbus to enter markets dominated by well-established competitors, in particular, Boeing. These strategic moves have involved both market and nonmarket elements. This article assesses the market and nonmarket strategies that Airbus has employed to establish itself in the crucial Asian market.

For three decades Japanese auto producers, supported by the Japanese government, deployed with extraordinary success market and nonmarket strategies to access the small and fragmented but rapidly growing car markets of Southeast Asia. The last half-decade has presented a series of unexpected challenges, including extended recession and financial reform in Japan; the lingering effects of the financial crisis in Southeast Asia; and the entry of new competitors from South Korea, North America, and Europe. These pressures have split the industry into two. Leaders Toyota and Honda have defended and extended traditional Japanese production networks. Weaker players such as Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Suzuki have accepted subordination to the leading western firms, which are rationalizing their Japanese partners and using them to enter Japan and other Asian markets. This article explores production, trade, and investment data, industrial policies toward autos in Japan and Southeast Asia, and brief case studies of Toyota and Nissan to illustrate the challenges to, and varying responses of, Japanese auto producers in developing Asia. These firms remain committed to Southeast Asia, but the days of Japanese dominance are drawing to a close.

This article examines the evolution of U.S. chemical firms' corporate strategies in Asia over the past decade. Prior to the Asian financial crisis, these firms treated the Asian market as an expansion outlet due to a persistent lack of growth in Western markets. Since the crisis, U.S. firms have reformulated their market and organizational strategies to better withstand disruptions of business or product life cycles, specifically through refocusing core competence and establishing regional production networks. Meanwhile, their nonmarket strategies have lagged behind market strategies in specificity and sensitivity to the Asian context. This article explores the early effort in safety and environmental self-governance of the chemical firms in Asia, and argues that the history of domestic competition and government-business relations in the home market has to a large degree determined the transnational strategies of U.S. firms. Finally, U.S. chemical firms strategies are increasingly dependent on the behavior of their Asian competitors - in particular whether Asian producers enter into alliances with U.S. firms or resist liberalization and regional market interpenetration.