FROM COMPLACENCY TO COMPETITIVENESS - AN INTERVIEW WITH VITROSMARTENS,ERNESTO

Companies searching for a way to navigate the changes in Mexico would do well to study Vitro, Sociedad Anonima, an 84-year-old Mexican compa ny with roughly $3 billion in sales and 44,000 employees. CEO Ernesto Martens-Rebolledo is transforming Vitro from a Mexican company to an i nternational company, and from a complacent competitor to an aggressiv e one. As Vitro positions itself to take advantage of the emerging Nor th American market, Martens describes the tightrope the company must w alk: ''We don't want to lose our identity as a Mexican company with a unique culture and relationship with our employees, but we don't want to be battered in the world marketplace either.'' To meet this challen ge, Martens has made some controversial decisions. In 1989, he led the only hostile takeover of a U.S. company by a Mexican company when Vit ro took over the Anchor Glass Container Corporation. And in 1992, he l aid off 3,000 workers - a first for a company that used to claim that it wasn't giving workers a job but a way of life. Through its proximit y to the largest market in the world and its joint ventures with Ford, Corning, Samsonite, and Whirlpool, Vitro is well positioned to compet e in the global marketplace. But Vitro faces many challenges. For Mart ens, the most important and most difficult challenge is to convince pe ople that they can no longer be complacent in the face of world compet ition.