Navigating Nationalism in Global Enterprise: A Century of Indo-German Business Relations

Navigating Nationalism in Global Enterprise analyzes the role of nationalism in global business strategy, showing how multinationals act not just as drivers of globalization but also as sophisticated operators in a world of nations. Using the case study of German companies in colonial and post-colonial India, Christina Lubinski traces how nationalism’s influence on business competitive strategies changed over the twentieth century and across major political turning points, such as two world wars and India’s transition to independence. She highlights how national imaginings are both relational because they derive from comparisons with other nations, and historical because they mobilize the past to legitimize future aspirations. Lubinski stresses that learning from the past is how multinationals engage strategically with the content of nationalism - i.e., a nation’s history, aspirations, and relationships with other nations. In India, German companies’ competitiveness was continuously dependent on navigating nationalism and on understanding that nationalism and globalization are inextricably linked.