in foreign markets would support strategies that transcended support of domestic operations. The multinational company, thus, tended to become a sort of holding company for many separate nationally oriented firms that often developed independently of one another.
The multinational concept was highly responsive to local market demands, yet it tended to introduce manufacturing inefficiencies into the larger multinational corporation (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1992, p. 12). Thus, the next shift in perspective was from multinational to global wherein companies began to develop products for a "world market and manufacturing them on a global scale in a few highly efficient plants" (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1992, p. 13). Within the context of manufacturing efficiency, the global approach was highly effective. The global approach, however, sacrificed the ability to quickly and effectively respond to change conditions in national markets. Additionally, the growing power of global corporations often became a focal point for attack on global corporations by national political leaders. It was in this environment that the transnational corporate perspective evolved. The transnational perspective demands that a corporation operating in multiple national markets be highly responsive to changing national conditions and demands, as was true of corporations operating with a multinational perspective, while simultaneously providing the benefits of the manufacturing efficiencies available from corporations operating with a global perspective (Bartlett and Ghoshal, 1992, p. 14). According to Bartlett and Ghoshal (1992, p. 14), key activities and resources in such corporations are "neither centralized in the parent company, nor decentralized so that each subsidiary can carry out its own tasks on a local for local basis." Rather, the resources and activities in a transnational corporation "are dispersed but specialized, so as to achieve efficiency and f...