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case
study
Time Marches On:
The Worldwide Watch
Industry
M. Edgar Barrett
“…the clock, like
other machines, is
brutal and callously
efficient in its task. It
takes raw material,
in this case time, and
processes and refines
it into something
more useful to human
beings. It breaks time
down into abstract
concepts called hours,
minutes and seconds,
and then doles them
out to us, always at
the same maddening
pace.”1
1
From “Tyrant of Time, Master of Minutes” by Jay
Bookman, Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Jan.
3, 1995.
I
t’s hard to imagine functioning
in today’s world without a
watch. The modern business
person may depend on the timepiece in order to catch a train,
remember an important meeting, or download information.
Watches serve as status symbols
and fashion accessories. They
keep near-perfect time in wildly
erratic climates from Siberia to
Sudan, from thousands of miles
in the air to hundreds of feet
below the surface of the ocean—
even on trips to the moon.
Prices range from affordable to
outrageous, making timepieces
available, if not essential, to
almost everyone in the world.
Copyright © 1999 Thunderbird, The American Graduate School of International Management. All rights
reserved. This case was prepared by M. Edgar Barrett, J. Kenneth and Jeannette Seward Chair in Global
Strategy, and Research Assistants Jennifer L. Barrett and T. Hawk Sunshine for the purpose of classroom discussion only, and not to indicate either effective or ineffective management.
Thunderbird International Business Review, Vol. 42(3) 349–372 • May–June 2000
Published 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
349
M. Edgar Barrett
But while the watch’s main function—telling time—has not
changed over the past 500 years,
the worldwide watch industry
has. The center has shifted
among three different continents, and while Switzerland,
Japan, Hong Kong, and the
United States are the industry
leaders today, there is no...