The Global and the Local: Understanding the Dialectics of Business Systems
Arndt Sorge
MPIfG Book
Abstract
The rhetoric of internationalization and globalization often suggests an inexorable move away from domestic cultural and institutional differences. Yet the development of internationalization within individual nations has been shaped by those very domestic institutions and cultures, as "best practice" or other kinds of international learning have been translated into established practice and knowledge. In this study, the author presents a sociological theory of the development of human societies to explain how business systems evolve and change, and how internationalization works to specify and change societal identities within nations. Examining changes in work, organization, corporate governance, and human resources, he shows how this interaction is a pattern that has been followed over centuries. Indeed, amongst the cases the author presents, he concentrates on the example of Germany, a supposedly highly homogeneous and closed society, as evidence for the universality of shifting borders, expanding horizons, local adoption and adaptation of global practices, and the hybridization of systems and standards, as the normal course of social evolution. The author's analysis of globalization combines rigorous theoretical reasoning with empirically grounded analysis, and deliberately adopts a general social science approach, drawing on research from business and management studies, sociology, political science, and history.
Readership: Advanced Students, Academics, and Researchers of International Business, Management Studies, Political Science, Sociology, and Economic Geography.
Contents
Wolfgang Streeck: Foreword
Preface
1 Dilemmas of Internationalization
2 Societal Effects Between a Vacuum and a Tropical Climate
3 Emergent National Distinctiveness Through International Exposure
4 The South Germanic Bedrock Under Foreign Incursions
5 The Governance of Work Systems
6 Enterprise and Management and Corporate Governance
7 Making Sense of Internationalization
