**4. Conclusions, or global integration vs. local responsiveness**

Since first steps, globalization produced some contradictions between companies on the one hand and the governments of host countries on the other hand as regards the difference between wished and effective results. Many countries and companies fronted in fact difficulties in facing globalization at first, especially as objectives, trade, competition, and employment were concerned, and this lack of understanding increased in the first period; the gap between State regulation and company strategies, they both maybe undervaluing the burdens of the same globalization.

In terms of objectives, while State policies aimed to raise the standard of living, companies were looking to increase their market shares in order to grow, also due to a critical feature they understood, which could be summarized saying for most industries "grow to survive," not to be secluded in small or even local markets nor, at worst, to fail. This way companies were compelled to think in two ways, adopting a twofold competitive strategy, a two-dimensional one: i) the local dimension to be able to compete locally, with both traditional competitors and new ones from other countries, and ii) the transnational dimension to compete all over the continent or world with global(ized) firms.

This way expanding companies joined a new strategy to their previous ones, entering in local markets both to sell and to make FDI in the field of production, so gaining footholds in the global market. In relation to the deepness of those investments, strategies between local responsiveness and global integration began to take shape (Export strategy, Standardization strategy, Multi-domestic strategy, and Transnational strategy).

With globalization, also competition gradually became a global one, changing in nature as well as in ways and means. States soon or later adopted the goal of raising new standards of economic efficiency for the country as whole, and companies on their turn had to raise their own efficacy and efficiency up to the level of the *representative multinational firm*. This positively changed them, while modernizing indirect effects were widespread on countries' reputation as well as citizens' income, savings and demand, and culture. In general, it can be said that, as the two main characters— States and companies—focused on the new world standards, and the original gap between them was gradually reduced.

Originally, local governments concentrated themselves slowly, and in some cases so-to-say insensitively on globalization, to realize later on, especially in the last 20 years or so that it was relevant to enter into bilateral/multilateral trade negotiations
