The Global and the Local

Abstract

The internationalization of business systems is interdependent with the re-enactment of societal differences in business institutions and culture. Combined approaches from social sciences, including business, management, political science, and history are a demanding but very fruitful option to explain how business systems evolve. Long-term perspectives overcome the limitations of studies focused on topical developments or shorter periods. Comparisons of societies or economies require attention to historical depth. Germany as a nation — here taken as an example and case in point — and as a business system is of great heterogeneity and has built its stability paradoxically, generating and absorbing a great amount of change. But this also means that the succession of models is governed by the dialectics inherent to a fundamental bedrock. Internationalization has always counteracted received domestic culture and institutions. At the same time, patterns of culture and institutions in place, at a given time, have influenced the path of internationalization. The international transfer of ‘best practice’ or any other kind of international learning has been translated and adapted into the domestic repertoire of societies and economies. The notion of ‘globalization’ evokes undue expectations of pervasive assimilation worldwide. Germany is a magnificent example in which to demonstrate that internationalization is always partial although it may be thorough. National culture and institutions have always become nationally specific by international exposure, and the latter always leads to new syntheses of culture and institutions which establish new national ‘models’.

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