INTRODUCTION: The world automobile industry is witnessing an unprecedented scale ofchange in the 1990?s. The end of Cold War structure, the rapid spread of theinformation revolution and the international economic globalization. Thewave of globalization has directly affected the international automobileindustry and has accelerated the global reorganization of it. First, theimpact of globalization emerged in the financial and securities industries,which experienced the Big Bang in the 1980?s. Then it spread to the fastgrowing information and communication?s industries.Now the automobile industry is no exception. The automobile industrywas, especially in advanced countries, primarily a national industry, nomatter how internationalized its business content developed. It has been arepresentation of a nation?s manufacturing industry serving the bestinterests of the nation. Take trade disputes concerning automobiles forinstance. It has been discussed as being related to the arguments of whatshould be the correct way to handle automobile trade, the balance of trade,and the job security for a countries labor force. The automobile industryalso has a wide range of related industries such as the component ormaterial industries, on which it has had a great impact at an entire nationallevel. In this sense, the industry was the national industry. Because of thisbackground, automobile manufacturers in advanced nations constructedtheir management strategies that centered on their own country. And theiroverseas strategies tightly connected to the domestic strategies and had astrong tendency to compliment them, no matter how heavily they dependedon their overseas business and exports. Therefore car manufacturers?competitiveness was closely related to how superior their competitiveness isin their domestic markets.
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