Many people (both supporters and critics) say globalization will lead to a homogenization of culture -- people around the world, enticed by McDonalds and Hollywood movies, will devalue their local culture and adopt American ways instead. I don't know if that will happen or not, but some recent articles and studies got me thinking about one way to test this theory.

Huge multi-national corporations have offices and factories all over the world. And each company has a particular "corporate culture" which is taught to workers in formal and informal ways. Managers from giant conglomerate XYZ, regardless of their native country, probably dress a particular way, use jargon unique to the company, go through the same training programs, file the same reports, and share the same inside jokes. In effect, they belong to a global "club" which gives them a good deal of their day-to-day identity.

So...is a German manager from Corporation XYZ more like a Corporation XYZ manager in Brazil...or does she share more in common with German managers from Corporation ABC? In other words, could corporate culture ever trump national culture?

If globalization really has the potential to turn people in Nairobi into clones of people in Chicago, shouldn't we see the first glimmers of this among IBM managers or Microsoft engineers in those two cities? The early answer seems to be "no."

In the Spring of 2002, the late Peter Martin discussed corporate culture and globalization in a column for the Financial Times (which is available only by subscribing to their online edition). He quotes heavily from a report released by International Survey Research (ISR). The report is based on surveys of nearly a million employees in the world's ten largest economies.

The bottom line of the report is that an employee's country is a much more accurate predictor of an employee's opinion than their industry or the particular conglomerate for which they work.

So what do you think? Is corporate culture more powerful than national culture? Does this tell us anything about the future of globalization? Please drop by the Globalization Forum and share your thoughts.

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