Unit Sixteen Multinationals in a Competitive Environment(国际经贸高级英语复旦大学).ppt

Unit SixteenMultinationals in a Competitive Environment:The Case of Philips Industries— J.J.Tuyt TEXT Introduction The environment of Philips Industries may well be called competitive. The situation in which we are doing business is difficult and we use terms such as targeting and strategy to describe attack and defence. We regularly take many far reaching and important decisions, which do not only affect the cash flow and profitability, but also the well-being of our employees, the integrity of the physical environment, the prosperity of the countries in which we are operating and many factors which contribute to the quality of life. I will concentrate on the strategy we adopted to maintain our position vis-a-vis our competitors, and I will not dwell on the many applications of information technology we are using today and which we consider an operational necessity in all our business sectors. Unit SixteenMultinationals in a Competitive Environment:The Case of Philips Industries— J.J.Tuyt The Company In case you are not familiar with Philips Industries the following will introduce this electronics company. Philips Industries is a diversified electronics company operating in about 60 countries in the world. It had a turnover in 1987 of circa 53 billion Dutch guilders or 26 billion Dollars, which took Philips to the 22nd place on Fortune’s list of the world’s largest companies. On the same list it is the 7th largest electronic company, operating 370 factories and employing 330?000 people, 24?000 of them in RD. The company is based in Europe, where about 62 per cent of the total turnover is generated in 170 factories. Philips was established a hundred years ago, when manufacturing of bulbs started in Eindhoven, Philips still is prominent in the business of lighting—the world leader—and the company hopes to maintain that position. Unit SixteenMultinationals in a Competitiv