Martin Jes Iversen

Towards a 'Managerial Revolution' in European Business? The transformation of Danish and Spanish Big Business, 1973-2003

This article examines the growth strategies and ownership of the 40 largest corporations in Spain and Denmark from 1973 to 2003 in the light of European economic integration. It follows the tradition of the Harvard Program and builds on the work of Richard Whittington and Michael Mayers on the history of European corporations. These studies have been extended in three ways: geographically, introducing a small north European and a medium sized south European economy; methodologically by supplementing internationalization to diversification as main growth strategies; and chronologically by analysing three decades of corporate changes, 1973–2003. The result showed no convergence in diversification or ownership patterns while in both countries the largest corporations were less market oriented and more international at the end of the period.

Mapping strategy, structure, ownership and performance in European corporations: Introduction

This paper is the introduction to the Business History special issue on European Business Models. The volume presents results of the international project about mapping European corporations, within the strategy, structure, ownership and performance (SSOP) framework. The paper describes the historical developments of the SSOP framework and introduces the contributions to the special issue.

Strategic transformations in Danish and Swedish big business in an era of globalisation, 1973–2008

This article concerns the corporate responses to the economic integration process from 1973 to 2008 in two small, open European countries, Denmark and Sweden. It focuses on strategic relations regarding the integration process and analyses the changing diversification patterns and internationalisation levels. The hypothesis from the economic integration literature indicates that we could expect a high degree of core business focus combined with a high degree of internationalisation concurrently with the economic integration process. The Danish case confirmed this prediction in a clear and substantial way, while the Swedish diversification pattern was marked by the continuous importance of diversification in the period from 1973 to 1993. This confirms the findings of Whittington and Mayer, who investigated the development of the largest British, French and German manufacturing enterprises. But the result also indicates that diversification perhaps proved to be less important after 1993 when the process of ‘Europeanisation’ dynamics was succeeded by the globalisation processes including the fast growing economies in South East Asia.

Measuring Chandler's Impact on European Business Studies since the 1960s

Chandlers impact on European business studies has undergone upswings and downturns over the past four decades. In this essay, I will divide his influence on European business studies into three distinct phases: the breakthrough, which lasted from the late 1960s to the late 1970s; the long parade of studies, beginning after the publication of The Visible Hand in 1977 and continuing into the mid-1990s; and, finally, the peak years of his influence, which began in the late 1990s and has lasted until today. I conclude the essay by proposing some theoretical and contextual reasons for the renaissance of Chandlers influence, reflecting on the ways that the changing status of social theories often has more to do with the researcher than with the research subject. My main point is that both Chandlers thesis on the growth and importance of large enterprises and his inductive working method will continue to have relevance for future studies of European business.

The establishment of the Danish International Ship Register (DIS) and its connections to the maritime cluster

This article discusses the development of second ship registers and their interconnections to the policy idea of maritime clusters. Through a narrative of the contemporary history of Danish maritime policy, the article shows how these apparently different policy measures were closely related and together constitute a coherent framework based upon specific values, views of cause–effect relationships, and perceptions of major challenges and their context. Danish maritime policy provides an excellent case for the study of the contemporary history of maritime policy-making. Denmark was among the first of the traditional shipping nations to set up a second register, and the concept of maritime clusters became part of Danish maritime policy before it emerged as a construct in European Union maritime policy. We provide detail on the unfolding of some of the most important recent events in Danish maritime policy and highlight its development as a process of learning that involves the prolonged drafting and fine-tuning of statements and ideas, and the borrowing and adjustment of policy ideas developed elsewhere.

Time for a Nordic business history initiative

ABSTRACT The current state of Nordic business history is by certain estimates better than ever. Nordic business historians publish extensively in leading international journals and have a strong presence at international business history conferences. Still, in this discussion article we raise a yellow flag of warning for the future of Nordic business history. We argue that the subject field is challenged along three important dimensions: (i) lack of relevant teaching, (ii) continued reliance on commissioned history and (iii) limited recruitment. The article discusses these challenges and seeks to place them in a historical perspective. For each challenge, we develop a set of concrete proposals to address the problems identified. A common theme in our proposed solutions is to intensify Nordic collaboration, particularly through the establishment of common, externally funded Nordic research projects. To create meeting grounds for the development of such projects, The Scandinavian Society for Economic and Social History – the formal collaborative body for Nordic economic historians and the owner of Scandinavian Economic History Review – should be reinvigorated.

‘Knowing the Ropes’: Capability Reconfiguration and Restructuring of the Danish Shipping Industry

The development of Danish shipping over the 50 years from 1960 to 2010 has been characterized by an overall fleet growth. However, there have been important dips disrupting the general development, some of which have been long-lasting and had distressing results for individual entrepreneurs. Half a century ago, around 1960, Denmark owned about 1.75 per cent of the world fleet and Danish shipping companies engaged successfully in all the main shipping segments. A decade later, Danish shipping proved more resilient to the downturn in world shipping markets than its Nordic competitors. The survival rate for Danish companies was higher than that in Sweden and Norway. In the mid-1980s shipowners cut costs and started reflagging their ships into open registries. Throughout the 1990s Danish shipping was in the doldrums, as it were, with some companies prospering and others failing spectacularly. In the initial decade of the twenty-first century Danish shipping companies proved able to exploit the global growth opportunities created by the demand-driven upswing in North America and South East Asia. By the end of the period covered in our analysis Danish shipping proved more successful than ever, controlling almost 5 per cent of the world fleet in 2008 and, according to the Danish Shipowners’ Association (Danmarks Rederiforening, 2010), carrying 10 per cent of world trade as measured in terms of the value of the goods carried.

The two regimes of postwar shipping: Denmark and Norway as case studies, 1960–2010

The aim of this article is to illustrate the most important changes in the regulatory framework of the shipping sector from the 1960s to 2010, and to analyse the basis for, and effects of, these changes. In order to explain how the transformation has occurred, we use two traditional maritime nations—Denmark and Norway—as case studies. First, we introduce the two regimes of Danish and Norwegian shipping: ‘the national regime’ from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s; and ‘the competitive regime’, which was fully established by the middle of the 1990s and still persists. Then, we briefly sketch the bargaining that accompanied the shift from the national regime to the competitive regime. Specifically, we show that the new regime primarily accommodated the interests of private actors such as shipping companies, rather than the interests of the authorities and the trade unions.

Global Shipping in Small Nations: Nordic Experiences after 1960

The period from the second half of the twentieth century to the beginning of the twenty-first has sometimes been called ‘the second era of globalization’. Shipping stood at the centre of this process, a position that may be explained in at least three ways. First, the shipping industry was by far the most important carrier of the expanding global trade in goods and raw materials, which made possible the wave of outsourcing and transnationally integrated value chains. Second, the shipping industry was more global in its growth strategies and political and institutional structures than most other industries. Finally, the cyclical movements of modern shipping could be regarded almost as an economic ‘Richter scale’ measuring the varying amounts of energy released by globalization. The fate of shipping is thus closely linked to the ebb and tide of economic activity and world trade. At the same time, the industry has made important contributions to the development and shape of the world economy through its reactions to the seismic disturbances.

Corporate Responses to Institutional Changes — the Effects of Europeanisation in the Case of Denmark, 1973–2003

The European Corporation. Does it exist or not? This apparently simple question requires a simple answer: Any company registered in Europe must be a European Corporation — just like any company registered in France must be regarded as a French company and any company registered in Paris a Parisian company. The problem arises in the moment one tries to include more meaning than just geography. Richard Whittington and Michael Mayer have suggested that in historical perspective the European Corporation might be marked by a particular organisational structure such as the holding-company structure in contrast to the typical American M-form, while Randall Morck and Lloyd Steier have differentiated between the Anglo-American dispersed ownership from the widespread private ownership in the rest of the world —including Europe.1 But why should the label “European Corporation” be used exclusively for companies with a certain organisational structure or a particular ownership structure just because researchers have found that these specific structures and strategies were quite common in Europe? What makes a French family owned holding company more “European” than a British multidivisional company with a dispersed ownership?