Hybridizing the Emerging European Corporation: Danone, Hachette, and the Divisionalization Process in France during the 1970s

Pierre-Antoine Dessaux and Jean-Philippe Mazaud

Enterprise & Society, 2006, vol. 7, issue 2, 227-265

Abstract: This article addresses the issue of the uses of the multidivisional form in the French context at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. Comparing two case studies, Danone and Hachette, it sheds light on specific experiences in two different industries, the food and the book industry, respectively, in order to contribute to the debate over the Chandlerian paradigm. These two cases show that the implementation of the M-form in European companies can neither be reduced to the necessary diffusion of a universal structure nor to managerial fashion. At first a matter of redistributing the power between the shareholders and the management, the M-form led to hybrid organizations with characteristics heavily dependent on intensive internal negotiations. These findings emphasize the potential diversity of the implementation of the M-form and of the relations between management and shareholders. Far from being linear, company trajectories then heavily depend on partial compromises.

Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:entsoc:v:7:y:2006:i:02:p:227-265_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Enterprise & Society from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().