II. Compare the views of business leaders on the problems of modern globalization

Percy Barnevik is one of the world’s most admired business leaders, recognized as the main ‘architect’ of the global Swiss-Swedish company ABB. Its activities include electric power generation, transmission and distribution, oil, gas and petrochemicals, industrial products and financial services. It employs around 175,000 people in over 100 countries.

We have now for ten years after our big merger created a global glue where people are tied together, where they do not internally compete, but support each other. And we have global leaders with global responsibility and your local managers working with their profit centres. So if you have the right agenda for these people and the right structure, you can use a scale of economy and your advantages of bigness. You have to start from the top with local people who understand language, culture and so on, and I think in this global world where the East is coming up now, that’s a winning recipe. You see the easy thing is to have the theory, but then to make the system work, to make people really work together, to trust each other – Americans, Europeans, Asians, to get over these national and cultural barriers, and then make them customer-driven. If you can achieve that, and create that culture deep down then I think you have an important competitive edge. When a company is undergoing a reduction of people your policies are put to a test. It is easy in good days to talk about people as your most valuable asset. But when you are stuck with the problem to diminish – how do you handle people? How do you help them get a new job? How do you try to transfer them internally? How do you try to re-educate them to try to put them into another job within or outside the company?

 

Dick Brown has turned the UK Cable and Wireless into one of the world’s leading telecommunications companies.

The world is globalizing and the telecommunications industry is becoming more and more global, and so feel we are well-positioned in the market place. You see currency markets are more globally tied, economies are globally connected, more so nowadays with expanded trade, more and more multinational accounts are doing business in many more countries. We’re at Cable & Wireless now, well-positioned to carry the traffic and to provide the services to more companies. As you go global, a handful of companies are going to really push out to be truly global companies. They’ll be local in chosen markets and global in their ability to carry their customers’ needs from continent A to continent B. Alliances are one way to go global, but it’s not the only way. You can acquire your way to ‘globalness’ by growing organically. So you can take your pick. Now 37 different names comprise the family of companies of Cable&Wireless. The brand is just a badge. How you behave, what is your character and personality, that’s what’s behind the brand, and so service levels, expectations for all of our 70 plus thousand employees around the world, we are doing more and more of this as we give a consistently high quality of care for customers no matter whether you’re in Singapore or Vanuatu or Latvia or Jamaica.

 

Mike Bloomberg is founder and CEO of the organization which bears his name.

As a CEO, my job is to remove barriers. My job is to make sure ideas get up to the top, my responsibility is to make sure it’s a meritocracy. And so I try to remove things that would impede the flow of information. Nobody in our company has a private office, we don’t have walls, conference rooms have glass walls and a lot of places have no doors on them. We encourage people to come in at the same floor, the employees’ snack bar is right when you walk in the door. We like our customers to mix with our people. We don’t have titles in our company, as titles are another one of those things that would keep people from talking. Bloomberg provides information services to over 140,000 customers in more than 91 countries, covering financial data and all areas of news. The company has over 3,000 employees around the world.

 

Len York, President of Taylor-Wharton Cryogenics LLC (TWC) and the Chief Financial Officer of the company’s parent, Taylor-Wharton International LLC (TWI)

One major aspect of the company’s new focus was how to best deliver solutions and services to our end-users – not simply selling cryogenic gas storage tanks to them,” York says.

“As technology continues to shrink the size of our world, I know the best way to make Taylor-Wharton stand out from our competitors is to add value to our products by selling them as a solution for our customers’ needs. When customers buy products from us, we want them to know our products come packaged with carefully thought-out designs, innovation, the highest level of quality in the industry, and the backing of a worldwide team that is committed to providing service to our customers throughout the world – wherever they might be.”

“Taylor-Wharton has consistently maintained a reputation for innovation, quality, safety, and value in the cryogenic storage market. We have restructured our company, invested in its people, plants, and processes, and emerged with a new sense of purpose to serve our customers better.”

“As our pledge of ‘delivering on our promises’, Taylor-Wharton will become the easiest company to do business with in the industry,” York claimed, adding, “We are working to provide the highest level of customer service, produce the shortest lead-times for our products, and deliver value unsurpassed by our competitors. As part of our efforts to service customers anywhere in the world, all of our sites worldwide have highly proficient multilingual customer service and engineering personnel on staff to answer our customers’ questions.”

“Whether our customers are located in Asia, Europe, North or South America, or elsewhere in the world, they will receive the same exceptional customer care.”

 

Hans Lonsain, Chairman and Managing Director at Chart Industries, is answering a couple of questions.