A series of surveys by Alan Rugman, professor of international business at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, and senior research fellow in strategic management at Templeton College, Oxford, suggest that only a small proportion of the largest companies that call themselves multinational have an effective global presence. Most companies, the research found, do business in only one of three dominant “clusters” — the European Union, Japan and North America.In a recent study (undertaken with Templeton graduate student Stéphane Girod), Rugman applied the Templeton Global Performance Index (a measure of the profitability of a company's foreign operations) to retail firms that describe themselves as multinational. He concludes that only one of the world's 49 largest retail multinational enterprises (MNEs) is truly global — luxury goods retailer Christian Dior/LVMH, which has 35% of its sales in its home base in the European Union, 31.3% in Asia and 26% in North America. Only five other MNEs have more than one-fifth of their sales in a region beyond their home location. The most recent report, “Retail Multinationals and Globalization,” funded by Britain's Economic and Social Research Council, is scheduled to appear in the February 2003 issue of the European Management Journal.G
