Fortune called Asea Brown Boveri, the giant multinational corporation created in 1987, "the most successful cross-border merger since Royal Dutch linked up with Britain's Shell in 1907." The coming together of two longtime national champions in the electrotechnical industry, Sweden's ASEA and Switzerland's Brown Boveri, marked the birth of a company with truly global aspirations, one whose apparent genius for combining strong central planning with local autonomy for its plants has made it a trendsetter.

An international team of reseachers assesses the dynamic interplay of the forces of...

German industry in particular is a central focus for studying technical and organizational changes in industry due to its pivotal position in international markets, its technological sophistication and its well-established training systems.

Originally published in 1992, this study brings together contributions which contain both theoretical approaches and extensive empirical studies, on the manufacturing industry in Germany, including comparisons to other european countries. It looks at the developments of new technology, identifying trends in rationalization and the influences...