Introduction to the special issue on global strategy

Intense competition among countries, industries, and firms on a global level is a recent development, owed to the confluence of several major trends. Among these trends are the decline of tariff and other trade barriers under GATT, and attendant rising confidence in the gains from free trade; enormous increases in direct foreign investment; the growth of organization and administrative structures to permit managing resources and risks across sovereign borders and over great distance, the gains in technology and its transfer from one economy and firm to another, and perhaps most important, the increasing interdependence of complex technologies and economies on one another throughout the value chain. The field of strategic management has come to the realization that often, and increasingly, competitive advantage can be won only from a global view of competition. For these and other reasons this fourth special issue of the Strategic Management Journal is on global strategy and is intended to highlight some of the major implications of growing global competition on research and practice in the field.