Overview

Navigating Nationalism in Global Enterprise analyzes the role of nationalism in global business strategy, showing how multinationals act not just as drivers of globalization but also as sophisticated operators in a world of nations. Using the case study of German companies in colonial and post-colonial India, Christina Lubinski traces how nationalism's influence on business competitive strategies changed over the twentieth century and across major political turning points, such as two world wars and India's transition to independence. She highlights how national imaginings are both relational because they derive from comparisons with other nations, and historical because they mobilize the past to legitimize future aspirations. Lubinski stresses that learning from the past is how multinationals engage strategically with the content of nationalism – i.e., a nation's history, aspirations, and relationships with other nations. In India, German companies' competitiveness was continuously dependent on navigating nationalism and on understanding that nationalism and globalization are inextricably linked.

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9781009054003

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Reviews

'Challenging the notion that globalization and nationalism are often at odds, Navigating Nationalism shows how German business in India succeeded by negotiating a role for itself in the nationalistic development programme of twentieth century India. This is a major contribution to the historiography of international business in the developing world.' Tirthankar Roy, London School of Economics 'Lubinski's meticulously-researched history of German business in India from the 1880s to the 1980s provides crucial insights into nationalism, empire, globalization, and business in the long run. A tremendous achievement that will become a must-read in multiple fields.' Heidi Tworek, University of British Columbia 'A richly contextualized and deeply researched historical case study that proposes different ways of thinking about these categories and ideas that we often do not sufficiently question.' Stephanie Decker, Administrative Science Quarterly

Author Information

Christina Lubinski is Professor of Business History at Copenhagen Business School. Her previous publications include The Routledge Companion to the Makers of Global Business (2020) and Family Multinationals: Entrepreneurship, Governance, and Pathways to Internationalization (2013). She was awarded the Henrietta Larson (2015) and Oxford Journals Article Prize (2013).

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