How Do You Say “Glocalization” in Mandarin?

by | July 21, 2004 | Articles, Globalization

Globalisation is here to stay:  As we say in New York, "Tell me
something I don’t know."

The question of interest is who’s doing it well and who’s doing it poorly,
and what lessons can be drawn?  Asian Legal Business did
a nice "35,000-foot" survey last
April (I should have picked this up sooner) that admirably ventures beyond
bromides and generalizations to make some points that sound trenchant
and just plain right:

  • For UK- and US-based firms to succeed in Asia, they must be "glocal"—combing
    global reach and throw-weight with an intensely local knowledge of
    the market.
  • The article takes a nice swipe at an Economist survey of
    global law firms from last February that essentially posited that UK
    firms’ profitability suffered from excessive numbers of and concentration
    on foreign offices, whereas US firms’ more conservative extra-territorial
    approach and domestic concentration boosted profitability.  Guess
    what?  UK firms have little realistic choice; compared to US firms,
    they have no sizable domestic marketplace to rely upon, and growth
    perforce means looking abroad.
  • The longer firms have beachheads in Asia, the more their partner
    and associate ranks are populated by locals.

The article almost slides into cliche at the end when it remarks that
global expertise is communicated and shared more rapidly today than ever
before, and, accordingly, that the quality of representation available
in (say) Singapore is ascending steeply:  But this commonplace also
has the characteristic of being true, and is a phenomenon a myriad of
other industries have already experienced. (The article does not say this, but I do: It is a theme of this blog, that the economics of legal practice is not presumptively different than the economics of other sophisticated professional service firms, or other service firms, or other sectors of the economy at large.)

I commend the article to anyone
with a material international presence, and especially to firms in
or looking at Asia.

But I have bad news for Yanks and Brits allergic to foreign languages:  You
better give serious thought to learning Mandarin; it’s not yet table stakes, but outside of Hong Kong, it would be very handy.

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