ureaus to examine the problem of management in a global marketplace. The problem they identify: that to survive the pressure of increasingly-free market competition, industries must go global - and hierarchical management structures cannot deal with the challenge. The basic problem with hierarchies in the worldwide business environment is that such managerial structures in "international operations become slow-moving - and at times redundant - clones of corporate headquarters" (Dwyer, 1994, p. 81). The solutions being experimented with appear to follow a "matrix system" to lesser and greater degrees. "In a typical matrix, a country manager or business-unit boss might report to both a regional boss and a product-group chief rather than straight up the line" (Dwyer, 1994, pp. 81-82). The duplication, or "cloning," of products that results from old-style management structures is illustrated by the experience of the Ford Motor Company. In the late 1980s the company's European and North American development teams both produced similar 4-cylinder engines - without sharing a single component. Now, according to new chairman Alexander Trotman, Ford has just developed the Mondeo, a "world car," via "an elaborate system using teleconferencing and shared computer-aided design [which] allowed staffers in Germany, Britain, and the U.S. to work on the project together" (Dwyer, 1994, p. 83). The conclusion: "Tomorrow's winners will use Western-style accounting, Japanese-style teamwork, advanced communications - and give entrepreneurial local managers a long leash" (Dwyer, 1994, p.80).
Ken Labich makes his view of the managerial status quo clear with the title of his article, "Managing - Why Companies Fail: Every corporate disaster has its own awful story, yet most debacles are the result of managers making one (or more) of six big mistakes" (Fortune, 14 November 1994, pp. 52-68). Surveying the executives of failed and barely surviving c...