Exporting the American Model: The Post-War Transformation of European Business

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1 Oxford Scholarship Online You are looking at 1-10 of 12 items for: keywords : Philippines manpol mancorp Exporting the American Model: The Post-War Transformation of European Item type: book acprof:oso/ The author explores the convergent and divergent trends in the evolution of business systems and organization in Western Europe in the postwar period. She examines in particular the influence of a large-scale, cross-national transfer of the American corporate model, including the Marshall Plan and the involvement of American business in European reconstruction. She focuses on France, West Germany, and Italy, looking in turn at the physical, ownership, organizational, and governance structure of each after Her core argument is that the model had varying degrees of success in each of those three countries and, in some areas, encountered significant resistance. The book underscores the socially constructed and historically contingent nature of structural arrangements shaping conditions of industrial production in capitalist countries today. National systems of industrial production are not given and necessary; they are made and shaped through time by actors with particular interests, often in direct confrontation with other groups. This shaping is taking place within particular institutional contexts, in peculiar political and geopolitical conditions. Foreign actors, in geopolitical power positions, can, it is argued, play a particularly significant role in such processes. European Labor and Productivity: Between All-Out War and Active Participation acprof:oso/ Page 1 of 5

2 This chapter discusses the negative impact of the speech delivered by U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall at Harvard University in June 1947 on international politics and European labor and productivity. The speech divided Europe and scarred the continent for more than 40 years. This division affected the internal political balance within a number of free or democratic European countries. Some Communist Party members were ousted from government coalitions in anticipation of American assistance under the Marshall plan. However, the countries that participated in the Marshall scheme did not readily accept the American business model and launched organized oppositions to the structural transformation of their local industries. Concluding Remarks acprof:oso/ This concluding chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the large-scale cross-national transfer of the American business model to Western Europe. It suggests that the post-war transformation of the national systems of industrial production in Western Europe was the consequence of an organized attempt to Americanize the Western European industrial landscape. Twenty years after the war, most of the common features of Western European systems of industrial production could be traced back to the American model, and this trend of American export of business models has still not subsided. Introduction acprof:oso/ This introductory chapter explains the coverage of this book, which is about the role of the American business model in the transformation Page 2 of 5

3 of European business after World War II. It attempts to address the issue about the coexistence of persistent differentiation and increasing similarities among national systems of industrial production. It proposes an account of the evolution on industrial production systems since 1945 that would take into consideration the contradictory trends of convergence and persistent differentiation. The American Structural Revolution: Inventing the Corporate System of Industrial Production acprof:oso/ This chapter examines the cross-national transfer of national industrial structural frameworks during the 1940s. After World War II, several Western European industries experienced a significant transformation of national structural frameworks. This evolution was towards corporate capitalism, the type or model originally pioneered by the U.S. This chapter explains the typology of national industries and structural arrangements that are constitutive of different types of national systems of industrial production. Stability of European Industries: Preserving Structural Arrangements before 1939 acprof:oso/ This chapter discusses the stability of European industries and efforts to preserve structural arrangements of national systems of industrial production before Before the beginning of World War II, Western European systems of industrial production shared a number of key structural features and they had overall stability. They operated mainly family and organized types of capitalism. The transformation of the American industry brought mixed feelings to Western Europeans. For Page 3 of 5

4 example, France feared contagion while Germany decided to become more familiar with the American industrial model, which led to vast quantities of American investments in Germany. Crisis Inside, Dependence Outside: Preconditions of a Cross- National Transfer acprof:oso/ This chapter discusses the influence of internal crisis and outside dependence of some Western European countries on the success of the cross-national transfer of the American model of industrial production. The end of World War II led to the collapse of the national order in France, Germany, and Italy, and confirmed the position of the U.S. as a world superpower. The three countries then became solidly anchored to the American sphere of influence, particularly in their national reconstruction efforts. This led to the large-scale, cross-national transfer of American industrial structural arrangements. Actors and Institutional Channels: Emergence of a Cross- National Modernizing Network acprof:oso/ This chapter discusses the key players and institutional channels that influenced the emergence of a cross-national modernizing network that paved the way for the cross-national transfer of the American model of industrial production to Western Europe. In the late 1940s, France and West Germany established cross-national networks with a number of Americans in key institutional positions of power. Such a network never emerged in Italy because of differences in objectives and ideology between the Italians and the American group. The institutional Page 4 of 5

5 contiguity inbetween the Germans and the Americans was provided by the American Military Government in Germany. Voluntary Imitation: Adopting the Corporate Model in France acprof:oso/ This chapter discusses the role of a small French group in launching and fostering the large-scale transfer of American structural models of business to France. Members of this group occupy key positions of institutional power on the French national scene. They not only developed a set of mechanism that was to bring about radical transformation within the French industry, but also redefined the American business model before diffusing it onto the national scene. This same group was also instrumental in the emergence of a Western European economic space. From Coercion to Imitation: Transplanting the Corporate Model to West Germany acprof:oso/ This chapter examines the transfer of American structural models of business and industrial production to West Germany. It states that the transfer process proceeded from coercion to voluntary imitation. After World War II, occupation authorities, dominated by the Americans, held all decision-making powers in West Germany. And as part of the American administration's efforts to rebuild the West German economy, it initiated a large-scale, cross-national structural transfer. This was accomplished using coercive means at the beginning but when the Americans co-opted a group of West Germans, the voluntary imitation process started. Page 5 of 5