Word: firm
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Without revealing the purpose, Project Inform asked Genelabs, Inc., a California biotechnology firm that manufactures the drug in the U.S., to test samples of Compound Q that Corti brought back from China. They wanted to make sure it was identical to the Compound Q used in the FDA-approved study. An attorney drew up guidelines that would keep the trials within federal law. Each patient made a videotaped statement, in the presence of an attorney and a witness, that he was entering the trial of his own free will. "What we wanted was a trial that was faster than...
...embarrassing for the U.S. But officials say the administrative and financial burdens involved are growing overwhelming. "Nowhere is it written," protested one, "that the U.S. should be the only destination of Soviets who want to emigrate." If embassy officials are defensive about the new procedures, they are also firm. To qualify as refugees, Soviets, like all other applicants, must prove that they have a "well-grounded fear" of persecution; those who succeed get an average of $7,500 in U.S. Government...
...SUPERIORITY COMPLEX. Many new acquirers start lecturing too soon. "You think because you have been successful in your own company abroad, you can run a U.S. firm the same way just because you have acquired the company," says Michel Besson, the French chief executive of CertainTeed, a maker of building materials based in Valley Forge, Pa. "You tend to underestimate their strengths and overlook your own weaknesses." An executive of a West German- owned U.S. subsidiary recalls a dramatic showdown: "Their people would come here and put down our people, our work ethics. I had a little problem with that...
COLONIAL ATTITUDES. When Britain's Blue Arrow employment firm took over the much larger Milwaukee-based Manpower in 1987, the new owners made little effort to understand the market they were entering, according to Manpower chairman Mitchell Fromstein. He even took offense at the Blue Arrow company newsletter, which he refused to distribute to his 1,400 U.S. offices because it was "poor in quality, provincial and British in nature with little articles about the soccer team in South Wales." Friction grew to the point that Blue Arrow tried to fire Fromstein, but in a battle for control he wound...
Such conflicts crop up in some of the most basic rituals of working life. "If an American wants an answer, he'll pick up the phone," says Kai Lindholst, a managing partner of Egon Zehnder, an international consulting firm. "A European will write a memo. The phone call will seem overly aggressive and pushy to the European manager, but the American needs to convey a greater sense of urgency because competition in the U.S. is so tough...