What is it German top managers are thinking? Surely, globalization entails many unexpected problems and while level-headed thinkers and analysts are already asking the question, if globalization is going to have a future at all? If we should slavishly devote ourselves to it? Top managers of German companies try to justify their globalization measures which allegedly bode well for the future. Recently, even raising their own income has been tied indirectly to globalization, using the argument that it is remuneration for these top managers who successfully lobbied for globalization in their company.

Again and again the connection between globalization and the size of a business is established. For me, this is absolute nonsense. Surely, there are industries where the size of a company does matter in regards to competitiveness, but if this should really be the case here or there, it would still be single instances, which are no more than the exception from the rule. The rule tells us, that corporate success in independent of company size. How else could a company like Porsche be the most profit-producing automotive manufacturer of the world? And we ourselves, a small family-owned and operated corporate consultancy, how could we be competing globally successful with such strong-performance consultancies such as McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group? In both and many other cases it shows that specializing on a specific product could be just as successful as the whole range of products of diversified multinationals. We say of ourselves that we are the right people when it comes to choosing a consultancy partner for the most demanding tasks at the boardroom level of companies.

The whole dilemma we are experiencing today originates from the insecurities, fears and doubts many top managers are running around with. Often it is due to some egomaniacal constraints, which are on people’s minds.

A powerful person in the insurance business asks, if one would be willing to suggest his company as insurer, while at the same time using the catch phrase globalization to lay off thousands of employees. While his subaltern changed distribution structures several times in the last three years and insurance premiums have been raised with steady regularity at the same time lowering indemnification payments. Siemens managers press ahead with restructuring the company via dismantling of the company and the image of the brand which has stood for reliability for the past one hundred years, is being trampled under foot. Squabbling at MAN, Scania and Volkswagen is anything but an example for good corporate leadership. DaimlerChrysler as admonitory example has never been heard of at this company.

Whatever becomes of globalization, it should not be used as excuse for the overtaxed managers of the second or third level. What the possible outcome could be, we have seen in Bavaria. Of all things an Italian banking group had to rescue the formerly ‘royal’ banks, after they had been mismanaged to a point that robbed them of any kind of autonomy, while all over the country and in Austria and Switzerland small and medium sized savings banks showed us, how to be globally successful even though they weren’t very big, international or globally active. But they were quick as greased lightening and as such much faster at taking advantage of good business opportunities than slowly operating major banks.

Our Swiss colleague requires a new quality of management. He says we should no longer use the instruments of the past to address the prospects of tomorrow. I think he is right. But I also think we need to free ourselves of the top manager caste, which is unable to keep truth from fiction, which does not know how to keep right from wrong and sense from nonsense.


For me, what is currently being called globalization does not have any chance to endure in the long run. Of course, the world seems to be shrinking, distances are easier to conquer and thanks to modern communications resources it has become possible to talk to one another without having to be at the same place at the same time. Yet, there is not going to be globalization to the benefit of a power factor. Maybe as vehicle for the transport of goods, but as such it would not really be any danger to top managers. Whatever is and is going to be, we should not allow that inadequacy and inability attain the power over respectability and truthfulness. We have cause once again in Germany, that things are going better in the economy. We should be happy about that. We should talk about that. This is what should rule the headlines of the media and not the inability of single people and we should be critical about what is being forced upon us as the dangers of globalization. Be careful, there a many bogus prophets under way and there has been little change in the last two millenia, even though globalization has been indicated as a threat, even though it has never been able to really change the world.