Abstract

Transnational corporations increasingly seek to present a vision of social

responsibility alongside the business vision. This reflects greater awareness of the
world as one single place, of global risk scenarios, and the politics of doing business.
There are also demands for greater transparency and accountability in corporate
actions by state representatives, grassroots movements and organized consumers.
Transnational corporations now aim to be socially responsible and to engage in
corporate citizenship by adhering to voluntary codes of conduct, social accountability
standards, etc. This discourse of corporate accountability is part of a discourse of
globality, or globe talk, a vital component of contemporary world culture, largely
produced, diffused, and sustained by organizations with expansive ambitions of
regulating global business; transnational corporations, business associations,
international organizations, NGOs and INGOs. Awareness of the global nature of trade
and capitalism, the associated risk scenarios, and the attempts at approaching
something like a humane globalization by the setting up of ethics standards and codes
of conduct, may be understood as a particular case of worldism. This worldism is
foundational, with universalizing and homogenizing claims. Corporate citizenship and
accountability are therefore treated as a form of organizational culture that involves a
particular kind of moral cosmopolitanism.
Abstract

The article at hand The Cosmopolitan Corporation Global - success requires that companies
appreciate diversity and distance rather than seek to eliminate them written by the Anselmo
Rubiralta Professor of Global Strategy at the IESE Business School in Barcelona and author of
World 3.0 Pankaj Ghemawat, was published in the Harvard Business Review in 2011 on the
pages 92-99 and deals with Ghemawats opinion that rooted cosmopolitans, in general, are more
lifelike and practical than statelessness.
Pankaj Ghemawat states that majority of organizations are ingrained in their home countries.
Even those companies that are assumed as being highly acting global are this usually not.

Therefore the author speaks of the World 3.0, a world which does not try to abolish differences
and distances among other influences such as people, cultures, and places, but to comprehend
them. Moreover he thinks that the key is to understand them.
A method to analyse and understand this cosmopolitan problem is to utilize a rooted map,
which uses measures as, for instance, inhabitants of one state and the GDP and is then
compared with other parts of the world in order to identify the rate of growth or size.
Equally important to mention are also three, to the author important, ways which lead, in

combination of each, to adding value; namely the AAA strategies. This AAA strategies
include the match of differences between countries and the respond regional needs (adaption),
the effort to cope with differences in order to gain economies of scale and scope internationally
(aggregation) and last but not least the exploiting of differences by getting something for a low
price in one country and selling it for a higher price in another country (arbitrage).
Furthermore the Professor of Global Strategy states that a firm can give...

Pankhaj Ghemawat is a well-known economist whose believes question the

perfect across border market integration. What is interesting, Ghemawat
became the youngest guru included in the guide of the greatest
management thinkers of all time published by The Economist in 2008.
Among other research articles, he is an author of The Cosmopolitan
Corporation published in Harvard Business Review in May 2011. In his short
thesis, Ghemawat claims that the global approach to the business
management many thinkers adopt is wrong. According to his dissertation
the vast majority of firms are deeply rooted in their home countries. That is
why, it is crucial to endorse cosmopolitan attitude of understanding and
working with cultural, political and economic differences rather than against
them. In fact, global success requires diversity and distance, and companies
should never eliminate them. Pankaj Ghemawat is a scholar who strongly
voices his opinions. Although in the mentioned article he is very much
focused on showing the essence of the problem, he tries to state his general
views at the same time. It makes the article to become an overview of
authors findings regarding not only the cosmopolitan corporations, but also
the global strategy or intercultural management. In his line of the arguments
he refers to the books he has written and the conclusions he has come to
before. As a consequence, the connection of many interesting but also a bit
dissenting opinions makes some parts of the article difficult to follow,
especially if you are not familiar with the authors viewpoints. At the very
beginning of his article he refers to Immanuel Kant or Kenichi Ohmae and his
famous book the invisible continent in order to give us the examples of
those who ignore boundaries. For sure, it is intriguing how he exposes the
assumption we need to agree with in order to understand the importance of

the discussed topic. The reader starts to believe that the problems exists
and...
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