Introduction

Abstract

In the 1960s and 1970s, academic attention to international management concentrated very much on the discussion about the driving forces that led firms to invest outside their home countries. Theories of foreign direct investment (FDI) sought to explain the rise of multinational companies (MNCs) which after the second world war (WW II) expanded with a tremendous speed. In the early 1980s, a new stream of literature began to emerge within international management. Less concerned with reasons that explained the existence of MNCs, a group of scholars began to devote their attention on the managerial challenge of effectively managing MNCs with worldwide operations. The fact that many MNCs in the 1980s were typically operating in all key-markets led to the development of the global management literature. The debate on the specific nature of global management, or globalization respectively, has infused the eighties and remains to be an interesting topic for academia and practitioners alike.