Thinking Globally — Acting Locally: Multinationals in the Global Political Economy

This month (August 1992), IBM is running a two-page magazine advertisement entitled ‘Thinking globally?’ which shows a map of the world dotted with blue pins representing IBM offices. The advertisement says that the world is getting smaller so people are thinking bigger; however, since cultures still differ, international firms face a paradox — how to think global and act local at the same time. IBM thinks local, according to the advertisement, by having offices around the world and manufacturing products that are customised for local markets; it acts global by treating all the offices as part of the same team and by offering consistent services around the world to its customers.