Companies in advanced economies need to work out new management strategies on globalization, especially as emerging markets account for an increasing portion of worldwide demand, Japanese and German scholars and business executives told a recent symposium in Tokyo.
They were speaking at a symposium jointly organized Feb. 22 by the Keizai Koho Center and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation under the theme, "Corporate strategy in times of globalization."
In a "semi-globalized" business environment, where the world's economic conditions are still not entirely "flat" but have only been partially globalized, companies will need to combine standardization — pursuing a globally-unified process and economies of scale — with localization — responding flexibly to the needs of each local market and decentralizing decision-making, said Shigeru Asaba, a professor at Gakushuin University.