International Integration and Coordination in the Global Factory/A Commentary on Peter Buckley's Writings on the Global Factory

The new institutional form known as "the global factory" is the key to understanding the changes in, and configuration of, the global economy. This paper examines globalization and the growth of the global factory as a response to changing external circumstances and managerial innovations. It pays particular attention to the need to coordinate activities across the global factory and examines the changes in management style that are required to ensure success in a competitive global economy. Technological changes, including the rise of e-commerce, have made global operations cheaper and more manageable. The organization of the global factory has made Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of focal firms conductors again. The metaphor of CEOs as orchestrators has never been more true than in the network that is the global factory. Managerial styles in global factories have to be 'orchestration' or 'conducting' rather than 'command and control' because of the severance of the planning and information unit from the legal and financial unit of the firm.