The growing internationalization of industry: A comparison of the changing structure of company activity in the major industrialized countries

Introduction No account of industrial change in recent years is complete without incorporating an assessment of the role of the growing internat- ionalization of production. US manufacturing firms expanded their productive activities in Europe rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s, and they were already heavily internationalized by the early 1970s. Since this time European and Japanese companies have responded with a rapid expansion of their international networks as well. A system of oligopolistic interdependence has been created on a world scale. The changing structure of industry in any country now depends upon the global decisions of multinationals in the relevant sectors, which are linked to the relative competitive strengths and weaknesses of the individual firms concerned.