Nations as Launch Pads for Internationalisation

Abstract

It has been argued by some commentators (see for instance Lehmann, 1998) that in all industrialised countries, irrespective of their ‘capitalist system’, there has in the recent past been an increasing divergence between companies and countries. This line of argument means that the fortunes of a country’s firms, especially those with international interests and activities, are independent of their country of origins. For example, in the late 1990s the deep travails in which the Japanese economy found itself did not mean that the demise of leading Japanese corporations was nigh. The global dynamism and success of Canon, Hoya, Honda, Toyota, TDK, Rohm and Sony, known as the ‘seven samurai’, contrasted with the quagmire of the Japanese economy. Similarly, the future prospects of the Charoen Pokphand Group, the Salim Group and Sime Darby are not exclusively dependent on the future prospects of their countries of origin, respectively Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia.