Expansion at Volkswagen: Minimizing Risk in E.U.?

It is perhaps common among gigantic corporations, such as the major automobile manufacturers, to assume that current profitability is likely to be augmented by expansion. Economies of scale are presumed to outpace diseconomies as even a large company expands. At a more basic level, it is generally assumed that if a company is not expanding, it is necessarily facing its downfall. The notions of equilibrium and steady state are fundamentally at odds with the more, more, more mantra of mammon. Accordingly, it can be asked whether efforts to strengthen a company’s equilibrium are more in line with long-term profitability. The very expression, strengthening an equilibrium is étranger or foreign to business parlance.


The full essay is at "Volkswagen in 2012: Minimizing Risk in the E.U."

Google Finds an Obstacle in the E.U.: A Lesson for Americans?

The European Court of Justice, the E.U. Supreme Court, ruled on May 13, 2014 that Google must defer to the right of users to have links about themselves deleted. Google’s management had sought to obviate any obligation to act on such requests. The New York Times points out that the decision indicates “that such companies must operate in a fundamentally different way than they do in the United States.”[1] The ring of fundamentality has implications for the international strategies of internet companies and affords us a better look at how business plays out in society differently in different societies.

From: "Google in the E.U. and U.S."