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6 - Learning by doing in infrastructure and financial services

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Mauro F. Guillén
Affiliation:
Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Esteban García-Canal
Affiliation:
Universidad de Oviedo, Spain
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Summary

One cannot understand the economic strategies of former monopolies if one does not also take into account the related political strategies … At the international level, these firms' political strategies have limitations related to the fact that not only the home government but also the host government plays an important role … However, in spite of those limitations, political strategies still remain a key part of these firms' behaviors.

Jean-Philippe Bonardi (2004: 116)

Construction firms … have diversified into activities requiring the same culture as that of the contractor … entering services, infrastructure concessions and, more recently, energy.

Florentino Pérez, Chairman and CEO of ACS

Services account for two-thirds of the global economy. In high-income countries, the share hovers around 73 percent, and in low-income countries around 46 percent. Among the BRICs, Brazil's 65 percent and Russia's 57 percent are much higher than the corresponding share for China (40 percent) or India (52 percent). Not surprisingly, only twenty of the BCG's ranking of the 100 most significant emerging-market multinationals are service-sector firms, although their size and international presence is likely to grow very quickly over the next two decades (BCG 2009). For instance, many firms in the field of business services outsourcing start by exporting from a home country with low wages and later establish operations abroad, as the cases of Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, or Infosys illustrate.

Type
Chapter
Information
The New Multinationals
Spanish Firms in a Global Context
, pp. 127 - 165
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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