The Transnational Company
Successful transnational companies see themselves as separate, non national entities.
Most companies doing international business today are still organized as traditional multinationals. But the transformation into transnational companies has begun, and it is moving fast. The products or services may be the same, but the structure is fundamentally different. In a transnational company there is only one economic unit, the world. Selling, servicing, research, finance, marketing, pricing, and management are conducted in contemplation of the world market. One of America’s leading engineering companies, for instance, makes one critical part for al its forty-three plants worldwide in one location outside of Antwerp, Belgium – and nothing else. It has organized product development for the entire world in three places and quality control in four. For this company, national boundaries have largely become irrelevant.
The transnational company is not totally beyond the control of national governments. It must adapt to them. But these adaptations are exceptions to policies and practices decide on for worldwide markets and technologies. Successful transnational companies see themselves as separate, non national entities. This self-perception is evidenced by something unthinkable a few decades ago: a transnational top management.
ACTION POINT: Ask the foreign technical-support center for your U.S. purchased computer or printer a question about the operation of your equipment. How does the quality of this support compare with that of your local cable company?
The Educated Person
The educated person needs to bring knowledge to bear on the present, not to mention molding the future.
In his 1943 novel, published in English as Magister Ludi (1949), Hermann Hesse anticipated the sort of world the humanities want – and its failure. The book depicts a brotherhood of intellectuals, artists, and humanists who live a life of splendid isolation, dedicated to the Great Tradition, its wisdom and its beauty. But the hero, the most accomplished Master of the Brotherhood, decides in the end to return to the polluted, vulgar, turbulent, strife-torn, money grubbing reality – for his values are only fool’s gold unless they have relevance to the world.
Postcapitalist society needs the educated person even more than any earlier society did, and access to the great heritage of the past will have to be an essential element. But liberal education must enable the person to understand reality and master it.
ACTION POINT: Read a book on politics, history, or anything that interests you. What did you learn? How can you put that knowledge to work?
Sustainable development is the pathway to the future we want for all. It offers a framework to generate economic growth, achieve social justice, exercise environmental stewardship and strengthen governance.
Ban Ki-moon
I really think that elected officials should be focused on how you create sustained economic growth, how do you create jobs and all of these issues that made people – segments of our society believe are really important are diversions politically.
Jeb Bush
I think Republicans really need to be disciplined, to stay focused on sustained economic growth.
Jeb Bush
Economic growth and human development need to go hand in hand. Human values need to be advocated vigorously.
Kailash Satyarthi
Technological innovation is indeed important to economic growth and the enhancement of human possibilities.
Leon Kass
Globalization and free trade do spur economic growth, and they lead to lower prices on many goods.
Robert Reich
We’ve seen over time that countries that have the best economic growth are those that have good governance, and good governance comes from freedom of communication. It comes from ending corruption. It comes from a populace that can go online and say, ‘This politician is corrupt, this administrator, or this public official is corrupt.’
Ramez Naam
Ever since the Industrial Revolution, investments in science and technology have proved to be reliable engines of economic growth. If homegrown interest in those fields is not regenerated soon, the comfortable lifestyle to which Americans have become accustomed will draw to a rapid close.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
But only ‘rich’ people by definition have the ‘extra’ money to buy things and invest to create economic growth. Do we really want to tax that ‘extra’ money away – and give it to the government to spend? Does that make any economic sense outside of politics and our emotional desire to make everyone suffer equally through these tough times?
Terry Savage
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Exploration is the engine that drives innovation. Innovation drives economic growth. So let’s all go exploring.
Edith Widder
We learned that economic growth and environmental protection can and should go hand in hand.
Christopher Dodd
Economic growth and environmental protection are not at odds. They’re opposite sides of the same coin if you’re looking at longer-term prosperity.
Henry Paulson
Unlimited economic growth has the marvelous quality of stilling discontent while maintaining privilege, a fact that has not gone unnoticed among liberal economists.
Noam Chomsky
I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth, environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.
Al Gore
If we make the tough decisions now, we will be one year ahead of 80 percent of the states in the race to economic growth. If we fail to act, we will fall even further behind… by going first, we can become first.
Chris Christie
The financial crisis should not become an excuse to raise taxes, which would only undermine the economic growth required to regain our strength.
George W. Bush
You campaigned against rich people and you got enough envy whipped up in the country and you’re gonna get ’em. You’re gonna stick it to those rich people. But guess what? You may not get anymore revenue. You may not get anymore economic growth. But you can say, ‘I stuck it to the rich people.’
Rand Paul
In his first year in office, President Obama pulled us back from the brink of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression and worked to lay a new foundation for economic growth. The president identified three key strategies to build that lasting prosperity: innovation, investment, and education.
Tom Vilsack
If you have a private firm and you spend a ton of money to pay employees, but what you produce is a flop, there will be no value to GDP. But government spending all gets counted as contributing to economic growth. That’s why in the early days of creating these measurements, some people didn’t want to count government spending.
Robert Higgs
It turns out that globalisation, while promising sameness through brand-name consumption, was fostering, through uneven economic growth, an intense feeling of difference.
Pankaj Mishra
As sure as the spring will follow the winter, prosperity and economic growth will follow recession.
Bo Bennett
Entrepreneurs and their small enterprises are responsible for almost all the economic growth in the United States.
Ronald Reagan