Introduction

While a number of companies have adopted the philosophy that, once they reach a certain degree of globalisation, they can, and should, divorce themselves from their national origins and become ‘international’ instead, sociological and anthropological research on social identity questions whether any company should – or, indeed, can – become completely ‘global’ in this fashion. Through applying a system, society and dominance approach to case studies of the British operations of two German multinationals, one a bank (‘ZwoBank’) and one a car company (‘AutoWorks’), I examine how they took different approaches to the process of being seen as ‘international’, study the impact of this process upon the management culture of the organisation and conclude with a look at more general implications for cross-cultural management and international human resource management.

‘Made in Germany’ or ‘Made by Siemens’: the problem outlined

The dominance effect, hyperglobalisers and convergence

Although it may seem counter-intuitive in light of the evidence to the contrary, the ‘hyperglobaliser’ and ‘convergence’ philosophies continue to exist, and to contribute to the idea that companies can become truly international. In this section I challenge this idea using SSD theory.

David Held, Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt and Jonathan Perraton (1999) identify hyperglobalisers as follows: that they assume that the processes of globalisation are bringing about a new era in which nation states are decreasing in importance and old divisions are being eroded in favour of a new, more egalitarian economic system (3–5; see also Ohmae, 1990).