The Twin Internationalization Strategies of US Automakers: GM and Ford

By the latter half of the 1990s, when, against a background of increasingly deregulated markets, people were beginning to talk more and more about the phenomenon of globalization, General Motors (GM) and Ford had already accumulated long experience in international markets. The two groups, respectively the largest and second-largest vehicle manufacturer in the world, are arguably the most internationalized as well (given the geographic dispersion of their sales, productive capacities and resources).1 Their adventures overseas date from early in the twentieth century, shortly after these two pioneers of the automobile industry had first started in business (Bardou et al., 1977; Hounshell, 1984). Before GM was reorganized by Alfred P. Sloan, Henry Ford had already opened the sector up to the British market, later moving into other European countries and indeed into other continents (Wilkins and Hill, 1964; Laux, 1992; Tolliday, 1998). He soon launched a number of overseas assembly operations, and subsequently began to manufacture locally, exporting to the best of his ability the rigid methods of mass production. GM, on the other hand, was born out of a conglomerate of firms. Because of the conditions of its birth, it has always diverged from Ford’s monolithic structure, and under the organizational leadership of Sloan, it was soon able to achieve a measure of corporate stability (Chandler, 1962).