K a trin G la tz e l E d ito ria l

a company. To maintain morale and to provide a sense of
unity at every level of the company, the transnational
has to move beyond restructuring assets and remolding
management processes. Top management must obtain
the personal commitment of every individual in the firm
to the overall corporate agenda. We call this process cooption.
Its integrative effects often prove to be more
powerful than those of any structure or system, however
sophisticated. 20
To develop such commitment, each individual must understand
and share the company’s purposes and values,
must identify with the broader goals and objectives, and
must accept and internalize its key strategies. In essence,
the company must build on an overall management
mentality that sees beyond the organization’s specific
economic purposes to a larger mission that deserves to be
supported and cherished. In Chapter 10, we will describe
how such a mentality can be embedded and nurtured.
In any complex organization, the main difficulty in
obtaining individual commitment to an overall purpose
is the limited perspectives and parochial interests of
managers in key positions. Neither organization structure
nor coordination systems can fully neutralize the
typical hierarchy of managerial loyalties, which place
local above global interests. Therefore, a fundamental
prerequisite for the normative integration a transnational
seeks is a sophisticated human resource management
system. The transnational uses systems of recruitment,
training and development, and career path management
to help individuals cope with its diversity and
complexity. 21
These, then, are the broad characteristics of the trans-
national – the organization model that is becoming
increasingly necessary for companies operating in today’s
international competitive environment. In the next
part of the book we will describe in more detail the trans-
national characteristics and capabilities that we observed
several of our sample companies creating. ¶
17 The idea that the allocation of administrative resource be considered
akin to a constrained maximization problem in economics
has been suggested by Caves (1982), who admonished organization
theorists for paying little attention to the costs/benefits
of different administrative mechanisms. Important exceptions
among organization theorists are Thompson (1967) and Ouchi
(1977, 1980).
18 The use of centralization, formalization, and socialization as
means of coordination and control has been discussed by many
authors including Pugh et al. (1968, 1969), Blau and Schoenherr
(1971), Child (1972, 1973), and Ouchi (1977, 1980). In the specific
context of the multinational corporation, the process implications
of these mechanisms were described by Bartlett (1979) in
a model that distinguished »substantive decision management,«
»temporary coalition management,« and »decision context management«
as alternative management process modes in MNCs.
See also the contributions by various scholars in a volume
edited by Otterbeck (1981).
19 Nonaka (1972) pointed out that the interpenetration of market
and hierarchical coordination was an important feature of
Japanese organizations.
20 This is perhaps one of the most enduring insights in management
theory and was the central theme in the works of both
Barnard (1938) and Selznick (1959).
21 Compelling evidence for the importance of enlightened human
resource management programs for corporate performance has
been provided by Kanter (1983), based on a survey of the HRM
practices of several major American corporations.
The Transnational 31 Revue für postheroisches Management / Heft 5