The magic of multinational management.

Multinational companies are making the news ever more frequently because of their economic impact on trade, employment, international payments, and national policies. But one of the most fascinating aspects of these companies--especially the advanced ones--is their ability to combine managers of widely differing cultures in effective, productive, work teams. How do they do it? In a broad sense, their "magic" is an ability to produce open, positive employee attitudes toward other nationalities and cultures. More specifically, the companies rely on certain policies of training nationals and expatriates to work together in an operating division or subsidiary. Gradually and pragmatically, they have been learning how to balance the need for local initiative with the need for central control, the need for understanding local ways with the need for understanding company ways, the need for job rotation with individual needs for stability, and so forth. Many such policies are described here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]