Using worldwide performance appraisal/promotion systems, business units and
headquarters human resources departments in the American firms manage all of
the senior-level managers worldwide, regardless of their nationalities. The
senior-level managers are actually first evaluated at the subsidiaries in Japan, and
then are appraised by business units in the United States. At the A5 firm, 4,000
to 5000 higher-level managers among 300,000 employees in the world are managed
by business units, and several hundred senior-level managers among them are
supervised by the headquarters human resources department.