Globalisation and the market for team-mates

The globalisation of firms is explored at theoretical and empirical levels. The idea is that a global firm is a multi-cultural team. The existence of a global firm is somewhat puzzling. Combining workers who have different cu ltures, legal systems, and languages imposes costs on the firm that would n ot be present were all workers to conform to one standard. In order to offs et the costs of cross-cultural dealing, there must be complementarities bet ween the workers that are sufficiently important to overcome the costs. The search for the 'best practice' is analysed and empirical support from an e xamination of trading patterns is provided.