(FORTUNE Magazine) – GLOBALISM -- that word is everywhere. But before dismissing the business buzzword of the moment as globaloney, be aware that it's serious stuff. For many major companies, going global is a matter of survival, and it means radically changing the way they work. Haven't companies like Exxon and GM been global all along? No. They are internationals or multinationals. They happen to do business around the world or are export minded but remain firmly anchored in their home countries with offspring in others. Building a few plants here and there the world over doesn't make you global either. Running a global company is an order of magnitude more complicated than managing a multinational or international firm. The global corporation -- or transnational corporation, to use the tag some academics prefer -- looks at the whole world as one market. It manufactures, conducts research, raises capital, and buys supplies wherever it can do the job best. It keeps in touch with technology and market trends all around the world. National boundaries and regulations tend to be irrelevant, or a mere hindrance. Corporate headquarters might be anywhere. Why the rush to take on the daunting task of going global? The rules for survival have changed since the beginning of the 1980s. ''Domestic markets have become too small,'' says Wharton professor Stephen Kobrin. ''Even the biggest companies in the biggest countries cannot survive on their domestic markets if they are in global industries. They have to be in all major markets.'' That means North America, Western Europe, and the Pacific Rim countries. Take, for example, the pharmaceuticals business. In the 1970s, developing a new drug cost about $16 million and took four to five years, says David Friend, head of the pharmaceuticals division of British-based Imperial Chemical Industries. The drug could be produced in Britain or the U.S. and eventually exported. Now developing a drug costs about $250 million and takes as long as 12 years. Only a global product for a global market can support that much risk. Says Friend: ''No major pharmaceuticals company is in the game for anything other than global products.'' That helps explain a series of mergers of major drug companies, most recently the marriage of Bristol-Myers and Squibb. Not every industry should view the world as one. Some packaged goods, for example, don't gain much from economies of scale and need to be marketed differently in each country. Strong niche players, such as the makers of luxury cars, can survive nicely. Mercedes is hardly threatened by global mass producers. And many resourceful companies are likely to prosper by doing things faster or better than the big boys. But Howard Perlmutter of Wharton identifies 136 industries, from accounting to zippers, where you may have to play world chess or get out. They include autos, banking, consumer electronics, entertainment, pharmaceuticals, publishing, travel services, and washing machines. Perlmutter sees a shakeout in each industry during the 1990s, leaving three to five key actors per sector. Adapting to the new global format won't be easy. Managers can find it tough to discard national preferences in making decisions about such charged matters as promotions or capital investment. The Japanese face a special challenge in rethinking the centralized model that has served them so well, says Hirotaka Takeuchi of Hitotsubashi University. An adviser to companies trying to go global, Takeuchi tells Japanese managers that they can no longer afford to be what he calls ''soles'' -- flat fish with both eyes on one side of their heads fixed on headquarters. They will also need to start hiring and using more non- Japanese. Honda, one of the companies he advises, hired six non-Japanese, mostly Americans, straight out of college two years ago to work in Japan, and more than ten last year. Sony this year appointed an American and a West German to its board. No company has yet reached a state of pure globality. Even with its worldwide net of products, plants, offices, and labs, IBM still has a long way to go. Others are just starting. Whirlpool bought control of Philips's $2- billion-a-year appliance business in Europe last winter and is beginning to integrate the two to create a worldwide appliance business. Every would-be global company has its own pace and approach, but common imperatives stand out -- as exemplified by several major world players:

IMPERIAL CHEMICAL INDUSTRIES The archaic name is entirely appropriate: The sun never sets on ICI's far- flung nerve centers, and the company has probably moved as near as any to being truly global. The world's 38th-largest industrial corporation, ICI sells $21 billion a year of pharmaceuticals, film, polymers, agricultural chemicals, explosives, and other products. In 1983, ICI began to abandon its traditional country-by-country organization and establish worldwide business units. The company concentrated its resources on its strongest ones. Within each, it focused activity where the most strength lay. Four of the nine new business units are headquartered outside Britain. Two are in Wilmington, Delaware -- ICI is growing 20% a year in the U.S. but only 2% to 3% at home. A factory in Britain or Brazil producing advanced materials or specialty chemicals answers to a boss in Wilmington. To avoid overlapping research around the world, labs were given lead roles near the most important markets. Advanced materials research went to Phoenix to be near clients in defense industries, while leather dye research went to the south of France, the heart of the market. The strategic shift created wrenching changes. ICI reduced its manufacturing jobs in Britain by 10,000, to 55,000; other people were transferred or taken off pet projects. ''It's a major change,'' says Hugh Miller, the American who heads the advanced materials and electronics group. ''It's hard on people who have built national empires and now don't have such freedom. We are asking people to be less nationalistic and more concerned with what happens outside their country.'' The upheaval has been especially worrisome to British employees, since ICI's stronger growth rate elsewhere attracts more resources. The payoff, says Miller, is better decision-making. ''Before, each territory would work up projects and you'd have warring factions competing in London for the same money. Now with one man responsible for a global product line, it becomes immaterial where a project is located. His profits will be the same. When you start operating in this manner, it takes a lot of steam out of the defense of fiefdoms.'' In pharmaceuticals, for example, better -- and quicker -- decision-making has helped ICI reduce the time lag in introducing new drugs to different markets from half a dozen years to one or two. ICI hopes eventually to make the introductions simultaneous. A global company needs a world view at the top. Until 1982, ICI's 16-person board was all British. Now it includes two Americans, a Canadian, a Japanese, and a German. Among the 180 top people in the company, 35% are non-British. British or non-British, they may go anywhere. Ben Lochtenberg, the new chairman of ICI Americas Inc., is an Australian who also has worked for ICI in Britain and Canada. He quickly learned that a common language is no insurance against cultural shocks. When he went to England, he couldn't get any respect with his direct Australian manner, so he learned the oblique ways of the English. For example, he says, if an English boss reacts to a pet project by saying, ''Perhaps you ought to think about this a little more,'' what he really means is ''You must be mad. Forget it.'' In the U.S., Lochtenberg had to unlearn the lesson. He told a manager, ''Perhaps you ought to think about this a little more.'' The manager took him literally. Asked why he had gone ahead, the man replied, ''Well, I thought about it, like you said, and the idea got better.''

GENERAL ELECTRIC Claude Benchimol, 39, jovial, open, and multilingual, was made to be a global manager. Born of Jewish parents in Morocco, he attended school in France, got his Ph.D. at UCLA, married an American, and went to work for Thomson CGR in Paris. His specialty is computed tomography, or CT, a diagnostic scanning system. Today he runs GE's global effort to develop premium CTs, working in Waukesha, Wisconsin, near the headquarters of GE Medical Systems. Benchimol moved after Thomson acquired GE's consumer electronics business in a swap in 1987 and in return gave GE cash and Thomson's diagnostic imaging business. At the same time, GE established GE Medical Systems Asia (Gemsa) in Tokyo, anchored on Yokogawa Medical Systems, which is 75% owned by GE. With this triad, GE secured its place as a world player in the business of making X-ray, CT, magnetic resonance, ultrasound, and other diagnostic imaging devices. The move fits Chairman Jack Welch's plan to be first or second in the world in a business or to get out. GE is No. 1, ahead of Siemens, Philips, and Toshiba. ''Rationalizing'' the business, to use a phrase favored when job losses are involved, was painful but productive. Each leg of the new triad became exclusively responsible for products in which it was the volume leader. General Electric CGR in France got primary responsibility for X-rays, Waukesha took over premium CTs and magnetic resonance equipment, and Tokyo got the $ cheaper lines. Thomson CGR's U.S. headquarters in Columbia, Maryland, was eliminated, and 15% of the employees in France lost their jobs. But the pain was distributed fairly. GE had previously cut the number of Medical Systems employees around Milwaukee from 5,500 to 3,500 and is considering a 10% to 15% cut in the X-ray division there. GE puts a lot of effort into helping the survivors and drawing them together. For example, it adapted what it calls a Global Leadership Program, developed and run by an international business school faculty directed by Noel Tichy of the University of Michigan. Over a period of ten months, the top 55 people from GE, CGR, and Gemsa met once on each of the three continents for several days at a time to learn about one another. In between these meetings they worked on three-way task forces assigned to deal with specific medical system problems. The purpose was as much to get them to understand one another as to solve the problems. The second group of some 57 managers has just begun its program. Claude Benchimol seems to be taking the merger in stride. It left him without a job in France, but GE needed someone to run CT development in Wisconsin. Benchimol looked like the best candidate -- worldwide -- so he got the job. There were culture shocks. He can't get used to his windowless office in the Waukesha plant where GE turns out several hundred $1 million CT devices a year. In France he always had a pleasant view. The French are surprised the American parking lots empty out as early as 5 P.M.; the Americans are surprised the French don't start work at 8 A.M. Benchimol feels the French are more talkative and candid. Americans have more of a sense of hierarchy and are less likely to criticize. But they may be growing closer to the French. Says Benchimol: ''It's taken a year to get across the idea that we are all entitled to say what we don't like to become more productive and work better.''

FORD MOTOR Unlike ICI, Ford is making its bid to be global without a major reorganization. Two years ago it unified all foreign and domestic auto operations under Philip Benton, head of international auto operations, and gave him a newly created title, president of the Ford Automotive Group. A small worldwide planning office was added to his staff. Otherwise the organization remains the same. The big difference is in the manner of developing products. Compare the creation of the subcompact Escort a decade ago with a current project to replace the compact Tempo-Topaz-Sierra line. The Escort was billed as a world car, developed in Europe for Ford to sell everywhere. It was indeed developed in Europe, but as Ford now acknowledges, matters got out of hand when the European engineers turned their designs over to the Detroit engineers. Engineers were created to design things, and the Detroit crowd couldn't keep its hands off plans made elsewhere. Result: Ford's claim that Escort is the world's biggest-selling car is somewhat disingenuous. Although the U.S. and European Escorts bear a superficial resemblance, they share very few common parts. For the follow-up to the Tempo-Topaz-Sierra cars, due in the early 1990s and designated the CDW27 for now, Detroit again gave lead responsibility to Ford Europe. But this time David Price, the Englishman in charge of the project, will coordinate all features of the new car for both sides of the Atlantic. If the skin is shaped differently for American tastes, he will have the final say. Kenneth Dabrowski, program manager for small cars in Dearborn, provides Price with a liaison service with designers and suppliers in the U.S. Unlike the Escort, both versions of the CDW27 will have the same platform, engines, and other parts. Even if the will to make the Escort a true world car had been there ten years ago, the technology wasn't. With the CDW27, Ford is using new communications methods, such as teleconferencing and CAD/CAM links to Europe, as well as plenty of travel, to manage the complex task of meshing car companies on two continents. European and American engineers don't automatically work together in harmony. Benton admits cultural differences -- meaning that American engineers may think their British counterparts are idiots and vice versa -- may be delaying the program by months. A bigger problem is that manufacturing has evolved differently on each side of the Atlantic. In the European Sierra, for example, side panels are one stamping. For the Topaz, the American equivalent, several panels are welded together on the line. If Ford succeeds in designing a single CDW27, the same plans and processes will be used in Europe and the U.S. So it will cost more than usual to tear up and retool U.S. factories for the new car. Ford believes the savings in design costs and time, as well as the standardization of parts, will easily justify the one-time expense. To its regret, Ford has no plants of its own in Japan. Instead, like other global companies, it has constructed a complex array of alliances to compensate for geographic holes, to fill niches, and to produce mass-market cars like the Escort. For instance, Ford owns 25% of Mazda. Mercury sells the Tracer, based on a Mazda design and built by Ford in Mexico. Ford sells the Festiva, made by Kia in Korea to Ford's design. And Ford will build a Nissan- designed minivan in Ohio, to be sold by both Nissan and Ford. Mazda leads the development of the Escort successor, now designated the CT20 and due out next year. Though Ford has made several complex arrangements, Benton says, ''We haven't yet learned how to make a three-way deal.'' He means getting Japan, Europe, and North America all behind one competitive world car. The three-way deal may be a necessary competitive step. Benton sees an overcapacity of nine million cars coming soon in the world's auto plants and predicts ''competition in this car-clogged market will escalate to previously unheard-of levels.''

AMERICAN EXPRESS Only 9.3 million of American Express's 33.3 million card holders are non-U.S., but they bring in 31% more revenue per card than Americans. As the world's GNP grows, the company will find many more potential members out there than at home. But how do you market a credit card to different nationalities with clashing values and tastes? The trick is to design a global strategy and then create ads that are strictly local. With its worldwide ad agency, Ogilvy & Mather, American Express sends themes like ''Don't leave home without it'' and ''Membership has its privileges'' around the world. The ads are created for specific countries, and even specific cities, by local agencies, usually the office of Ogilvy & Mather. In Japan the ''privileges'' slogan translates to ''Peace of mind only for members.'' A typical ad shows a young couple visiting the drift ice in the north -- a remote and exclusive place that appeals to the crowded Japanese -- and rejoicing that their American Express card allows them to stay two days longer. In Australia an exuberant young couple has a blast on their card. So it goes around the world.

Until the mid-1980s, most of American Express's foreign revenue came from traveling Americans. Then, says Rick Thoman, president of American Express International, the company realized that services are inherently global and switched from an export mentality to a global mentality. A recent report by Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., the New York investment research firm, cites Amex's high-quality, upscale image as ''possibly the most potent asset in all financial services'' and predicts the company's international business will generate 40% of the growth in card profits over the next five years.

CITICORP Global companies with high-tech links can mobilize resources quickly around the world to help a client. Until a couple of years ago, a potential borrower approaching a Citicorp office in Australia or Hong Kong could get only the services of that office. He might even visit several Citicorp locations to get competing offers. Today, for a single deal, the bank can seek out the best rates and terms offered by its offices anywhere in the world. It might draw funds from outposts in several countries, in different currencies, involving several tax jurisdictions. Such deals take a lot of time, but they are becoming more common as Citibank's clients spread around the world. The bank began sprinkling branches around the world in 1902 but only recently began to link them in a global business, using strength in one market to gain advantage in another. Michael Callen, who runs Citicorp's investment banking worldwide, says that the technology to operate globally didn't exist at the beginning of the decade. For instance, Citicorp's investment banks in 90 countries could quote only their own exchange rates. Now they can give a client the best rate in any one of the 90. Citicorp is testing automatic tellers that would serve a client anywhere in the world. Part of Citicorp's global thrust comes from the sheer growth in volume of international business -- the world's daily trade in currencies has reached $400 billion. The volume now justifies keeping Citicorp's trading rooms in New York, London, and Tokyo running 24 hours a day. But a new mind-set is more important. Officers are required to work through ad hoc international teams to assemble deals. To make sure Citibankers help one another, says Callen, the company has adopted a system of cross- evaluations. A manager in New York who is supposed to work with a colleague in Tokyo gets rated by the fellow in Tokyo and vice versa. Their bonuses are based partly on how well they collaborate.

TEXAS INSTRUMENTS Globalization is helping Texas Instruments fight back against the Japanese in memory chips -- the product TI pioneered. Under Chairman Jerry Junkins, TI has designated a single design center and manufacturing organization for each memory chip. TI has also gone for help to the source of its problems, the Pacific Rim. Two of its four new $250 million memory chip plants are in Taiwan and Japan, where it can cut capital costs because interest rates are half U.S. rates. To reduce high research costs, it has made an alliance with Hitachi to develop a 16-megabit chip. And the TI boss in Japan, Akiro Ishikawa, runs worldwide strategy for the company's whole memory business. So far TI's strategy has worked. The company has grabbed 5.2% of the world market for memory chips; their sales helped boost earnings by 69% to $368 million last year. Like GE's Jack Welch, executives in other global industries, as well as academics, see a stark choice between being right at the top or playing in a different league -- if at all. Citibank's Callen thinks the three biggest contenders in each banking specialty will pick up as much as 90% of the earnings to be made in that business, while the rest will get nothing but crumbs. Says Perlmutter of the Wharton School: ''Unless a unit in your company has a shot at being a global leader, you'll probably have to get rid of it.'' That may be stating the choices too starkly -- many survivors with large niches will doubtless survive handily. But the competitive pace is increasingly being set by emerging global giants.

BOX: YOUR GLOBAL CHECKLIST There's no handy formula for going global, but any company serious about joining the race will have to do most or all of the following:

-- Make yourself at home in all three of the world's most important markets -- North America, Europe, and Asia. -- Develop new products for the whole world. -- Replace profit centers based on countries or regions with ones based on product lines. -- ''Glocalize,'' as the Japanese call it: Make global decisions on strategic questions about products, capital, and research, but let local units decide tactical questions about packaging, marketing, and advertising. -- Overcome parochial attitudes, such as the ''not-invented-here '' syndrome. Train people to think internationally, send them off on frequent trips, and give them the latest communications technology, such as teleconferencing. -- Open the senior ranks to foreign employees. -- Do whatever seems best wherever it seems best, even if people at home lose jobs or responsibilities. -- In markets that you cannot penetrate on your own, find allies.