What HR issues arise when a firm like Ford moves to a regional and than global or transnational structure? Ford Motor Company has been in business for over 100 years and when it comes to a global mindset, Ford is ahead of most of its competitors.

Early in its history, Ford was like many large firms, which often sent people off to other major countries to set up companies just like the one back home. The first Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, was in many ways an internationalist, because within a few years of establishing his company in the US he was opening manufacturing and assembly plants all over the world—the first of which was a Model T assembly plant in Trafford Park, England, in 191 1 —that were essentially smaller versions of the original plant in Detroit. So, over the years Ford evolved into a collection of local country and regional fiefdoms.

But by the mid-1920s (even earlier in some countries), a sense of local pride had developed in many countries around the world. These countries all began to develop their own automotive companies. Suddenly there were local automotive companies in the UK, in France, Germany, Australia, all making their own vehicles. Nations wanted to assert their independence and saw the automotive industry as a means of investing in their own economies. Indeed, some early automotive pioneers in other countries even began to export their own cars to other countries as well as develop their own plants elsewhere. The Europeans exported, the Americans exported, the Japanese exported—that was the way the competitive game was being played. This was the beginning of the multi-domestic” structure for large multinational corporations, as described in this chapter.