Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

REGULATION SCHOOL THEORY
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operates at a global level, with vehicles being marketed on a world scale, something
which means that one-time national champions can no longer be secure, a
point underlined by the collapse early in 2005 of the last major British motor
vehicle manufacturer, Rover, following a decade of uncertainty, retrenchment and
desperate partnerships to keep the company afloat. Rover had been a subsidiary
of British Aerospace, then it linked with Japan’s Honda, and followed this with
being bought by Germany’s BMW. All failed and production virtually ceased a
few years after BMW divested its stake. In the late 1960s Rover’s forerunner, the
British Leyland Corporation, had been the fourth biggest carmaker in the world.
Much the same features are manifest in petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals,
computers, telecommunications equipment and consumer electronics. In fact,
virtually everywhere nowadays the market is increasingly a global one.
It is undeniable that this world market is roughly divisible into three major
segments – North America, Europe and the Far East – since the remainder of the
globe offers pretty poor prospects for return on investment; of course the major
TNCs operate extensively in all three domains. Moreover, noting this broad
tripartite division usefully reminds us of something else that globalisation of the
market means. I refer here to the emergence in little more than a generation of
what are today perhaps the archetypical global corporations, namely Japanese
conglomerates which frequently profess to having no national roots (other than
in those countries in which they happen to invest). The likes of Honda Motor
(2004 revenues $80 billion), Matsushita ($81 billion), Toyota ($173 billion) and
Sony ($67 billion) have distinctive global strategies for their product ranges. Over
the years, in automobiles, consumer electronics and, most recently, information
and communications technologies, these have proven to be a serious threat to
the dominance of Western corporations. Be it automobiles, office equipment, televisions,
video or computers, the Japanese challenge has rocked what was, at least
for a time, a comparatively settled economic order. We might add that suggestions
that TNCs are ‘placeless’ are overstated since most have high proportions
of assets and employment in a ‘home’ nation (Dicken, 2003, pp. 221–36).
Globalisation of production
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It follows that, as corporations are increasingly involved in global markets, they
must arrange their affairs on a world scale. Global production strategies are a
central feature of such a development, TNCs increasingly arranging, for example,
to locate their headquarters in New York City, design facilities in Virginia, manufacture
in the Far East, assembly perhaps in Dublin, with sales campaigns
co-ordinated from a London office. This may be an exaggerated case, but the
inexorable logic of globalisation is for TNCs to plan for such strategies in order
to maximise their comparative advantage.
This development, as with the globalisation of markets, catapults informational
issues to the fore, since how else can market strategies and worldwide
manufacturing facilities be organised other than with sophisticated information
services? I have more to say about this later, but here observe that the
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