Takeaways from corporation rankings

Ranking corporations in Bangladesh is too new a game to attract attention. Compounding the exercise is the orientation typically associated with it. After all, rankings represent results of what corporations have done, the number of steps they have climbed or slipped, and a general sense of the nature of the country’s economy. We could, for example, say that manufacturing companies or banks dominate Bangladesh, with but a handful of kingpins depicting diversification possibilities. Linking, particularly retrospective rankings to structural information not only outlines economic footprints of the past but also what forward passes to make.
Such takeaways serve crucial and strategic information. Analysing U.S. corporations through charts, for example, leaves food for thought for neophyte economic players, like Bangladesh. Particularly if this is done retrospectively, we can map and draw relevant lessons from how the United States shifted from an agriculture-based economy into various stages of industrialisation. Those familiar with the works of Walt Whitman Rostow in the 1950s and 1960s will know of such transitions, called developmental stages. For example, countries can graduate from a ‘traditional society’ (agriculture-based) to ‘pre-take-off’ industrialisation (with predominantly low-wage jobs), then the ‘take-off’ (initiating industrial diversification) and ‘mature’ stages (deepening and broadening diversification such that manufacture-related transits into service-sector jobs). Culminating all these stages is the affluent ‘high mass-consumption’ stage, when relishing the fruits of production shapes the gross domestic product (GDP), such as tourism booming, luxury-goods consumption, outgrows the actual process of production.
This should ring a bell. Bangladesh identified a game-plan to reach that development apex with the November 24, 2021 UN Resolution (A/RES/76/8), based upon CDP (Committee for Development Policy) recommendation, for graduating to a ‘developing’ status from November 2026, thence the government’s Vision 2041 targeted ‘developed’ country by the 2040s. Between now and then, therefore, Bangladesh must speed through three Rostowian stages, having exited the ‘traditional society’ with the explosive readymade-garment (RMG) boom from the late 1970s, the RMG boom fits the ‘pre-take-off’ stage, while both the ‘take-off’ and ‘maturity’ stages will demand diversification of all sorts, from industries to skills, services, and pay-offs (in essence, why we are desperately seeking free-trade agreements and more students go into technical training than undergo routine university education).
Michael Noer and Jeff Kauflin (2017) who have probed changes in the U.S. corporate charts inform us five of the top six companies on the Forbes 100 list just before the corona virus pandemic struck the planet in late 2019, were all ‘tech’: Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon occupied the top-four slots, in that order, while Facebook ranked sixth. Broader still, over 3,700 corporations made the ‘tech’ sector the largest in the United States, followed a long way back by just under 1,400 financial and medical services sectors, respectively, while the ‘conglomerate’ sector represented the third largest sector with under 900 companies. In fact, the fifth slot was by one company to have been at or near the top throughout the 20th Century: Berkshire Hathaway.
All of these corporations belong to Rostow’s final stage, in which services dominate. So the first takeaway for Bangladesh just happens to be long-term: ‘tech’, ‘financial’, ‘medical’, and ‘conglomerate’ sectors must drive the upward climb for that final ‘graduation’. Among the tasks to be taken, the first requires investing in technical training more than typical universities, the second to buffer up stock-markets across the country, the third to convert the country’s burgeoning nursing-homes/hospitals into researching the more affluence-associated health problems (before foreign health franchises enter the national market), such as diabetes and cancer, and the fourth to promote both vertical and horizontal corporate growth within the reasonable limits of a Muslim society whose history of exploitation thwarts monopolistic behaviour. Note how there were no manufacturing industry in the top U.S. 15 on the Forbes 100 list, and only one, Exxon Mobil, at #5, represented the primary (extractive) sector.
Turning the clock one-hundred years back, the manufacturing and primary product sectors dominated the U.S. charts: steel, with over 3,500 corporations, led the chart towards the end of World War I, followed by three extractive sectors: oil and gas, with just over 1,400 corporations; mining with over 1,100; and food with almost 850. Except for the 400-odd automobile-related corporations, manufacture was absent among the chart-leading sectors, suggesting a ‘pre-take-off’ stage transition to the ‘take-off’ stage. Since General Electric was listed as a ‘conglomerate, not a single manufacturing corporation was to be found in the top-fifteen slots. General Electric was also to remain in the charts for the entire 20th Century.
Bangladesh’s second takeaway lies right here: sow the seeds of industrial diversification, in this case, steel, since automakers would soon dominate the U.S. economy, just as they now constitute quite a chunk of Bangladesh’s imports and economic investments.
Matters would change dramatically half a century later. The top corporation, U.S. Steel, would slump to #35 by then, while AT&T would continue at the second slot. Like General Electric, there remain two other companies of the very few to remain high in the charts for a full century, as would two oil companies, Standard Oil of New Jersey (#3 then, #5 fifty years later), and Standard Oil of New York (#15 then, and Mobil, #15 fifty years later).
General Motors would climb into the top-five, and with it, oil companies thrived: Texaco at #6 (to become Chevron later), Gulf Oil at #10, and Standard Oil of California (Chevron) at #4. Marketing, another service, entered the top-ranks with Sears, Roebuck at #7 and E.I. du Pont de Nemours at #11, as too a different kind of a service, Xerox, at #12. This smattering of service-sector companies in the top-ranks indicated Rostow’s ‘maturity’ stage had been reached, and indeed the transition towards a ‘high mass-consumption’ stage was unfolding.
Many more takeaways can be added for an aspirant ‘developing’ country Bangladesh. The third must recognise the constant importance of energy throughout the five stages: manufacturing would be impossible without ample and inexpensive energy available, and services of any kind would be crippled without energy, especially in the rapid-flowing ‘information age’, driven by the internet. It is crucial for Bangladesh to seek ‘tech’ know-how to reap affordable wind and solar energy. It does not have ample energy reservoirs, but the global movement away from fossil fuels makes renewable energy the sine qua non of a DC Bangladesh.
This necessitates the fourth and fifth takeaways. A whole range of steel byproducts must become a vital part of the economy, and the country’s shift into ship-building/recycling, motor-bike/cycles, and automobiles suggests the seeds of the ‘take-off’ stage have been sown, awaiting ‘maturity’ as early in the next twenty years as possible. On the other, the launching of Digital Bangladesh in late 2008, and particularly the dozen-odd hi-tech parks envisioned, speaks of the ‘post industrial high mass-consumption’ stage investments being made.
Fortifying these will require a number of social components: from ‘tech’-training and measured consumption to infrastructure-building. Bangladesh’s eggs may be in the right basket, but so much more depends on harnessing (nurturing and properly fitting) the outcomes.

Dr Imtiaz A Hussain is Professor, Department of Global Studies & Governance (GSG) Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB).
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