Despite the increase in globalization most MNCs have home bases that give them resolutely national identities. General Electric and Microsoft are clearly American just as Honda and Toyota are Japanese. Only one in five of the boards of ostensibly global U

Despite the increase in globalization most MNCs have home bases that give them resolutely national identities. General Electric and Microsoft are clearly American just as Honda and Toyota are Japanese. Only one in five of the boards of ostensibly global US companies include a non-US national. Sixty per cent of Honda’s sales are outside Japan, but only 10 per cent of its shares are held by non-Japanese. Toyota has 41 manufacturing subsidiaries in 24 countries but no foreign managers among its vice-presidents in Tokyo. Mergers and acquisitions have little impact. Daimler-Chrysler, hailed in 1998 as a merger of equals, soon became a German company with German executives taking control of the US operation while many of Chrysler’s most senior executives either left or were forced out. Even within Europe with its single market and single currency, panEuropean companies, free of national demarcations, remain elusive. One typical variant is that pan-European ventures end up being dominated by one nationality.