Enticing paragraph from an article on Earthlink News this morning.
"Today more Fortune 500 companies are European than American. European enterprises – Daimler-Benz on the ground, Airbus in the air, the Titan mission to Saturn in space – all threaten to usurp traditional American dominance. The United States’ GDP was long the world’s biggest. Now the EU’s is bigger."
Don’t know if you can access it or not if you don’t have an Earthlink account, but here’s the URL so you can try. It was a very interesting article, not negative, but very thoughtprovoking, especially considering the deficit problems we are currently having.
http://start.earthlink.net/article/int?guid=20050226/42200250_3ca6_1552620050226-1519438404
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3 Comments On More Fortune 500 companies are European than American
SalB: Thanks for the link. My ISP is earthlink/Sprynet, so I just went to the article. I don’t think you need to be one of their subscribers to access that news article.
I’m not suprised about that article. The USA is declining for a number of years now. People here in the USA are too arrogant to want to admit this. Too bad the article didn’t go into much more detail….
I could be wrong, but I’m sure that the exchange rate between the Euro, Dollar, and English Pound are affecting the worth of US companies as well. Not enough to make a huge difference, but I’m sure it is a factor.
Anyhow, I think that Americans have to adapt their thinking in how companies should be run. Outsourcing for a healthy bottom-line isn’t the only thing that is important. I think that a lot of policies that are built into european companies (often mandated by the governments where the companies are incorporated, etc) tend to have a more paternalistic attitude toward their employees, which I am sure helps their productivity, etc. This is definitely lacking in American corporate culture.
Some American companies are taking better care of their employees, but not enough. I used to work for Target while taking a year off between undergrad and grad school, and I was very impressed with how much they offered their employees. I would work for them again in a heartbeat. However, the companies that are becoming more paternalistic are few and far between. Maybe our economic system needs an overhaul… but I’m not holding my breath.
HG15: Good observations. Corporate America is the product of our education system in unison with the spirit of capitalism. The jobs issue is a tough one. The company that I work for – a gigantic multi-national collossus incorporated in the USA has a good philiosophy with regard to jobs. It goes something like this: "If 50% of our sales are from overseas then don’t be surprised if 50% of our headcount is overseas." Not much different than keeping receivables and payables in their appropriate balance. When these things get out of balance – it shows a fundamental breakdown in managerial leadership. Donerail