Global or stateless corporations are national firms with international operations

Abstract

The debate on American competitiveness in the world economy has recently been thrown into some disarray. Robert Reich asserts in his essay "Who is us?" that in a "borderless" world characterized by "stateless" corporations, it makes no sense to talk of American competitiveness in terms of American-owned corporations, but rather that American competitiveness should be defined in terms of the skills and experience of the American work force. And as Kenichi Ohmae states: "It does not matter who builds the factory or who owns the office building or whose money lies behind the shopping mall or whose equity makes the local operation possible. What matters is that the global corporations ... act as responsible corporate citizens."