Globalization and the German model of capitalism - erosion or survival?

The German business system has been regarded as a particularly tightly coup led system, with embeddedness of even multinational companies (MNCs) in the ir home base as particularly deep. A study of the impact of companies' chan ging internationalization, if not globalization, strategies is therefore es pecially suited to test competing claims about their effects on the German business system. Are we experiencing an erosion of this system, an adaptati on in a largely path-dependent way, or even a greater specialization and st ronger crystallization of the German business system? To investigate these questions, the paper examines a small number of German MNCs in their domestic and international context. More particularly, the w ork focuses on whether and how their emergent globalization activities affe ct the reproduction or erosion of the three institutional complexes which s hape the factors of production: the financial system; the innovation system ; and the industrial relations system. The paper concludes that a new type of transformation hybridization - is emerging. It is regarded as a conseque nce of German companies' growing integration into a global economic system.