Michael Mayer

Taking strategy seriously:responsibility and reform for an important social practice

Strategy is a pervasive and consequential practice in mostWestern societies. We respond to strategy’s importance by drawing an initial map of strategy as an organizational field that embraces not just firms, but consultancies, business schools, the state and financial institutions. Using the example of Enron, we show how the strategy field is prone to manipulations in which other actors in the field can easily become entrapped, with grave consequences. Given these consequences, we argue that it is time to take strategy seriously in three senses: undertaking systematic research on the field itself; developing appropriate responses to recent failures in the field; and building more heedful interrelationships between actors within the field, particularly between business schools and practitioners.

Strategy, Structure and `Systemness': National Institutions and Corporate Change in France, Germany and the UK, 1950-1993

This paper distinguishes between `tight and `loose perspectives on national business systems. These two systems perspectives are compared in the light of new and existing European data on corporate strategies and structures, on the one hand, and national institutions of business finance, management control and top management development on the other. Despite broadly stable and distinctive institutional backgrounds, European corporations are found to have been transforming their strategies and structures steadily and in very similar ways during the whole post-war period. The paper concludes in favour of loose, rather than tight systems perspectives in contemporary Europe and considers implications for comparative research and economic restructuring.

Ownership Identity and Concentration: A Study of Their Joint Impact on Corporate Diversification

This paper examines the impact of ownership on product and international diversification. While ownership concentration has received considerable attention from agency theorists we argue that a more nuanced analysis is necessary. We consider how the identity of owners moderates the impact of ownership concentration on diversification strategies. We develop a framework that explains how the combination of different motivations, resources and capabilities associated with different types of owners results in significantly variable relationships between ownership concentration and both product and international diversification. From a theoretical perspective this suggests a social contextualization and extension of the agency theoretic approach that characterizes the field. Based on a study of 222 European firms between 1994 and 2007 we show that family ownership concentration has a positive impact on product and a negative impact on international diversification while the impact of institutional and state ownership concentration is negative on product diversification and positive on international diversification compared with family ownership. This is the first study to provide a comprehensive framework explaining how ownership concentration and identity interact and affect both international and product diversification.

Euro-elites: Top British, French and German Managers in the 1980s and 1990s

As European economic integration proceeds, this paper examines the integration of managerial elites in the major West European economies. It finds that top manager profiles in France, Germany and the United Kingdom have changed very little despite major internal and external pressures over the last two decades. French top managers still enjoy strong family and State connections. German managers remain strongly oriented to engineering. The power of finance professionals in British boardrooms has only grown stronger. The article traces these enduring national patterns of elite formation to distinct educational and ownership systems in each of the three countries. Though there are signs of increasing convergence amongst the national elites, the article suggests that this is likely to be slow.

For Boundedness in the Study of Comparative and International Business: The Case of the Diversified Multidivisional Corporation

The fate of national approaches to management in the global economy is contested (Whitley, 1999; Geppert et al. in this volume). As we shall see, the arguments are complex, the stakes high. Nevertheless, the key question may, initially at least, be put quite simply: arc previously diverse national forms of business organization and management practice converging on common patterns and processes? For a long line of commentators (Rostow, 1960; Ohmae, 1990, 1995; Yip, 1992; Reich, 1993) the answer is a clear yes. They believe that economic processes will ultimately lead to the erosion of any notable national distinctiveness, a ‘wilting away of the idea of a cohesive and sequestered national economy and society’ (Amin and Thrift, 1994: 1). For advocates of the convergence thesis there is, ultimately, one best way of organizing, one best way of managing, which firms must adopt if they wish to succeed In the global economy. Such views have been strongly opposed by those who suggest that national cultures and unique societal and institutional structures will continue to support different, yet sustainable, patterns of economic organization and management practice (Whitley, 1994; Zysman, 1994; Hollingsworth and Boyer, 1997; Thomas and Waring, 1999).

Diversification and Internationalization in the European Single Market: The British Exception

This article examines the long-run impact of the 1992 completion of the European Single Market on the diversification and internationalization of European business. It does so at a particular moment of crisis: the exit of the United Kingdom from European Union (“Brexit”). The article finds that completion of the European Single Market is indeed associated with significant and widespread changes in the strategies of European businesses between 1993 and 2010. European business has converged on more focused diversification strategies and followed similar patterns of internationalization. The most significant exception is the consistently low level of British business’s commitment to European markets. The distinctiveness of British internationalization is, in a sense, Brexit foretold.

Advance and Retreat: How Economics and Institutions Shaped the Fate of the Diversified Industrial Firm in Europe

Abstract Theory predicts that economic and institutional changes increase competitive pressure and lead to the retreat of unrelated diversified firms, while, at the same time, allow more economically efficient related forms of diversification to persist. This study investigates the long-term waves of diversification in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom between the 1950s and 2003. It documents a rise in diversification until the mid-1990s and a retreating wave since the inception of the single European Market. These waves reflect both an early shift to related diversification and nationally variable trends of unrelated diversification. We examine the fate of the unrelated diversified firms in more detail to establish what caused some to refocus and others to resist the wider trend. In particular, we explore if and how different kinds of ownership facilitated the strategic choices to maintain existing unrelated strategies. We examine these choices in detail by considering representative and illustrative company case examples.

Over the Top of the Hill: Sensemaking and the Role of Meetings in Sustaining Strategic Change

Research points to the importance of senior manager sensegiving in initiating and implementing strategic change. However, little research explores in detail how this takes place over time to not ju...

Ownership identity and concentration: a study of their joint impact on corporate diversification strategies

This paper examines the impact of ownership on product and international diversification. While ownership concentration has received considerable attention from agency theorists we argue that a more nuanced analysis is necessary. We consider how the identity of owners moderates the impact of ownership concentration on diversification strategies. We develop a framework that explains how the combination of different motivations, resources and capabilities associated with different types of owners results in significantly variable relationships between ownership concentration and both product and international diversification. From a theoretical perspective this suggests a social contextualization and extension of the agency theoretic approach that characterizes the field. Based on a study of 222 European firms between 1994 and 2007 we show that family ownership concentration has a positive impact on product and a negative impact on international diversification while the impact of institutional and state ownership concentration is negative on product diversification and positive on international diversification compared with family ownership. This is the first study to provide a comprehensive framework explaining how ownership concentration and identity interact and affect both international and product diversification.

Ownership Identity and Concentration: A Study of their Joint Impact on Corporate Diversification: Ownership Identity and Concentration

This paper examines the impact of ownership on product and international diversification. While ownership concentration has received considerable attention from agency theorists we argue that a more nuanced analysis is necessary. We consider how the identity of owners moderates the impact of ownership concentration on diversification strategies. We develop a framework that explains how the combination of different motivations, resources and capabilities associated with different types of owners results in significantly variable relationships between ownership concentration and both product and international diversification. From a theoretical perspective this suggests a social contextualization and extension of the agency theoretic approach that characterizes the field. Based on a study of 222 European firms between 1994 and 2007 we show that family ownership concentration has a positive impact on product and a negative impact on international diversification while the impact of institutional and state ownership concentration is negative on product diversification and positive on international diversification compared with family ownership. This is the first study to provide a comprehensive framework explaining how ownership concentration and identity interact and affect both international and product diversification.