Global Swarming

Over the last half century multinational enterprises have essentially "swarmed" the globe with regional and local offices in an attempt to benefit from expanded opportunities. The theme of the present paper is that this phenomenon can be usefully be viewed as significantly self-organized swarms searching a solution landscape for optimal solutions to challenges presented by new and rapidly changing organizational ecologies. The paper applies a particle swarm optimization perspective to this phenomenon, relates it specifically to current models of knowledge building and exchange in these enterprises, and discusses the implications for the globalization process