The document discusses the book "Managing Across Borders: The Transnational Solution" by Christopher A. Bartlett and Sumantra Ghoshal. The book addresses the challenges of international business in the 1980s and argues that a new organizational model called the "transnational" solution is needed to achieve global efficiency, national responsiveness, and innovation simultaneously in a changing global environment. It presents case studies of 9 multinational companies and their varying degrees of success adapting to new pressures.

1. “Managing Across Borders,
The Transnational Solution”
By: Christopher A. Bartlett and Sumantra Ghoshal - is about the
Challenges of International Business Particularly in 1980s.

2. Three Main Parts
“The Transnational Challenge”
“Characteristics of the Transnational”
“Building And Managing The Transnational”

3. The first part, called “The Transnational Challenge”,
deals mainly with conceptual issues like the definition
of multinational, global and international companies as
well as structural fit and administrative heritage. It
tries to answer the question "why” nowadays
transnational organizations are needed.

4. The second part, called “Characteristics of the
Transnational”, describes mainly the three key
attributes of the transnational organization. Which are
the integrated network configuration of assets and
activities, flexibility due to specialized roles and
responsibilities and last but not least the facilitation of
learning due to multiple innovation processes. It tries to
answer the question “what” is the transnational
organization.

5. The third part called “Building And Managing The
Transnational” prescribes mainly what managers have
to do in order to build and manage an organization that
corresponds to the model of the transnational
organization. Tries to answer the question “how” can a
transnational organization be build.

6. The Transnational Challenge
Bartlett and Ghoshal argue that because of new
pressures, which have transformed the global
competitive environment, even the largest companies
worldwide have to rethink their traditional strategies of
doing international business. This means that
especially these companies, but not only these
companies, have to consider the adequacy of their
organizational structures and processes.

7. During their studies Bartlett and Ghoshal
investigated nine leading American, European and
Japanese companies of the following three worldwide
businesses: consumer electronic business
(Matsushita, Philips, General Electric’s [GE]), branded
packaged products business (Unilever, Procter &
Gamble [P&G], Kao) and telecommunications
switching business (Ericsson, NEC, ITT). They argue
that three of the studied companies were losers or
laggards.

8. “MANAGING ACROSS BORDERS:
THE TRANSNATIONAL SOLUTION”
Regarding the new challenges (GE, Kao, ITT) and six
companies survived but were battling to maintain viable
competitive positions in the new environment
(Matsushita, Philips, Unilever, P&G, Ericsson, NEC). As
reasons for that the authors mention the very different
strategic and organizational responses of different
companies in different industries as well as rather
organizational deficiencies than inappropriate strategic
analysis.

9. Thus for example GE lost competitiveness because of a
lack of global efficiency; Kaos internationalization failed
because of its lack of national responsiveness and ITT
struggled through because of its lack of worldwide
learning and innovation. This means that the problem
for managers of worldwide companies was not to
recognize what they had to do to enhance their global
competitiveness, the challenge was rather how to do
this respective how to develop the organizational
capabilities to do it. In short: The answer was obvious
but the way of answering was obscure.

10. Bartlett and Ghoshal identify very different strategic
characteristics of the three studied businesses during the
past. Thus the consumer electronic business demanded
basically global efficiency whereas the branded packaged
products business required mainly national responsiveness
and the telecommunications switching business called for
innovations and there global transfer. Regarding the
different strategic characteristics the author’s distinct three
models of strategy respective three types of companies in
international business: multinational, global and
international companies

11. Three Types of Companies in International Business:
Multinational Companies build strong local presence
through sensitivity and responsiveness to national
differences.
Global Companies build cost advantages through
centralized global-scale operations and,
International Companies exploit the knowledge and
capabilities of the parent company through worldwide
diffusion and adaptation.

12. The authors state, that because of the dramatically
change of the strategic demands through environmental
forces during the mid-1980s, the traditional approaches of
managing worldwide businesses are not anymore an
adequate response to the new challenges. Indeed the new
solution and strategic challenge of managing a company’s
worldwide operations in a highly competitive, volatile
and changing business environment, is the transnational
organization.

13. The reason for this is, that the performance of a
company is no longer based on the fit of one-
dimensional strategic requirements (responsiveness or
efficiency or knowledge transfer) and the company’s
dominant strategic capability, but rather on the ability
of a company to achieve the three requirements at the
same time. In order to develop these multidimensional
strategic capabilities, companies have to go beyond the
pure structural fit and have to increase their
organizational flexibility by reshaping their
administrative systems, communication channels and
interpersonal relationships.