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Bringing together managers from different countries and cultures after international mergers is often seen as beneficial for the development of multinational companies. The article refers to existing approaches in the literature on modern cultural management and the organisation of multinationals to develop a framework explaining when and in which way national diversity affected the composition of the governing bodies and the strategy of the company. It therefore focuses on the nationality of owners and managers and asks to what extent corporate nationalities persisted after the merger and if single national groups determined the strategy. Based on original archival material the case of the Dutch-German man-made fibre manufacturer AKU/VGF/Akzo illustrates that its ownership structure depended to a large extent on political circumstances and that changing corporate nationalities shaped the governance of this company. Our study contributes to opening-up the black box of the composition and organisational structure of multinational boards and the locus of decision making within multinationals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nationality of contemporary multinational corporations has become increasingly ambiguous, and this ambiguity is far from exclusive to the current global economy; a similar past ambivalence occurred with multinational investments in Portuguese colonies. This study analyses how multinationals handle strategic decision-making and governance when the corporate centre is ambiguous. It uses archival data on actual corporate decisions to explore how the headquarters' strategic and administrative functions split across national centres. The results emphasise that the balance of power among different locations depended on accessing capital, knowledge, and specialised services. Three dynamic factors emerged to explain the changes in corporate decision-making configurations over time: project management capabilities, the project's duration, and capital intensity. However, there was no single evolutionary profile. Combining or choosing between nationality legacies for locating corporate functions was a strategic choice, more dependent on firm-specific aspects than on contextual constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analysed the process of construction and connection to the electrical grid of four Spanish nuclear power plants with different financial and technological foreign partners: those of Zorita (PWR by Westinghouse), Garoña (BWR by General Electric) and Vandellós I (GCR by EDF) (belonging to the first generation of atomic plants and producing electricity from 1969–72) and that of Trillo I (PWR by KWU, connected in 1988). These four examples allow us to observe how the learning curve of nuclear engineering and the acquisition of skills by Spanish companies evolved. Progressively the domestic industry achieved higher levels of participation, fostered by the Ministry of Industry and Energy. When the atomic plants under construction were paralysed by the nuclear moratorium of 1984, and several other projects were abandoned by the utilities along the way, Spain had developed an industrial sector around the fabrication of service components and engineering for nuclear power plants to compete internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with one particular aspect of economic decolonisation: the inclusion of local managers in the companies of the former colonial powers, in this case, the promotion of Indonesians to managerial and supervisory positions in Dutch multinationals. The Indonesian government blamed Dutch companies for being too slow in training and promoting local managers, and Dutch historiography agreed with that judgement. The replacement of expatriates by local managers, however, should be considered in the broader context of the diverse functions of expatriates. This article argues that for multinationals the use of expatriates is essential for creating a social network that enables knowledge transfer and control. The local subsidiaries profited from the transfer of knowledge and expertise; becoming part of that international network through exchange of staff is more important than getting rid of all expatriates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign investment is at the core of discussions around the long-term development of Latin America's economy. However, some aspects of foreign firms' Latin American operations have not been analyzed extensively, such as management staffing strategies. This article examines recruitment patterns, managerial styles, and the professional development of executives in Argentina, contrasting cases of British and American companies from the end of the nineteenth century through to the 1930s. It tracks the main changes in the policies of foreign companies that transferred managerial skills and know-how from core countries to the periphery. The article shows how more 'local' talent was promoted to executive positions from the 1920s onwards and proposes that immigrant non-expatriates were a major source of managerial talent, in addition to expatriates (PCNs) and locals (HCNs). Multinational firms' socialisation strategies also benefited from the social networks built by immigrants who had settled in the River Plate area from the mid 1800s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses the role of commercial and technological alliances with Japanese firms in the internationalisation of Spanish healthcare corporations between the 1960s and the 1980s. These alliances taught the local partners to operate in global healthcare markets, particularly in legal, organisational, and financial terms. Firms like Almirall, Hubber, and Grifols benefitted from Japanese knowledge transfer to enter Asian and American healthcare markets. The case of Grifols, for which more archival sources are available, is the focus of the article, and demonstrates that alliances with Western subsidiaries of the Japanese Green Cross Corporation played an instrumental role in teaching the managers and technical staff of the Spanish healthcare firm to go beyond their previous exports and undertake foreign direct investments in the US health market. The study suggests a future research agenda to explore more about East–West alliances in the internationalisation of peripheral economies of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares employment at multinational mining companies in Chile and Norway from ca. 1870 to 1940. I find that multinationals in Chile recruited foreigners to managing and middle-management positions, while Norwegian workers were heavily involved in management of multinationals in Norway. The exclusion of Chileans encouraged enclave tendencies and prevented knowledge transfer, while strong networks were created between multinationals and the local industry in Norway through job switching. Evidence suggests that local workers were employed if they were qualified and that discrepancies in institutions stimulating capacity building in the two countries largely explain the different employment patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the influence of early exposure to advanced markets of the United States and Germany in the growth and internationalization of health care firms from Spain, a late industrialised country. Based on the case studies of the Spanish corporations Grifols and Ferrer, the study shows that early exposure to advanced markets helped them grow in their national markets, and in the world health care industry. It shows further that the specific capabilities developed by both firms were determined by path-dependent networks with scientists and institutions, on the one hand; and strategic alliances, acquisitions and mergers with German and US corporations on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to analyse the trajectory of FASA-Renault during the stagflation crisis. In late 1972, the Spanish government enacted the so-called Ford decrees. The intention was to stimulate specialisation in the European arena by inserting the Spanish subsidiaries within the international strategies of large transnational corporations. In doing so, the effects of the economic crisis were compounded by the restructuring of the sector. The goal is to understand how, in the midst of this situation, FASA-Renault was able to increase production and the size of its workforce, ultimately becoming the leading firm in the sector in terms of production and sales in Spain. This is remarkable, due to the fact that labour force participation in Spain fell by nearly 3 million people from 1974 to 1985. The article argues that FASA-Renault, albeit with nuances, kept its commitment to diversification, neither adopting practices inspired by the production systems of the large Japanese manufacturers nor following the model put forward by the US giants based on large-scale production of a single low- to mid-range car for export. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the position of US and European business in the debate about American direct investment in Western Europe in a historical perspective, from the establishment of the Common Market to the introduction of US regulation of foreign direct investment (FDI) a decade later. Based on abundant and diverse archival documents, it sheds new light on the process of Americanisation and contributes to existing research on transnational networks, by revealing the active role industrial leaders on both sides of the Atlantic played in shaping the political responses to problems raised by the American firms' massive presence in the Common Market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most research on British business in Latin America has concentrated on the free-standing companies, such as the railways, which characterised British investment before 1914. Apart from Royal Dutch Shell, the most important new British investments thereafter were manufacturing companies, which steadily increased their presence in the region. Some began to arrive before 1914, but several more made significant investments between the wars, especially in Argentina and Brazil, with a further wave of new investment after 1945. This paper utilises corporate archives, as well as those of the British government and Bank of England, to investigate the financial aspects of their growth. While the provision of finance for fixed investments and working capital was relatively straightforward before World War II, thereafter it became more difficult due to government regulation on both sides of the Atlantic, leading to ingenious solutions to overcome financial challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although family firms are traditionally associated with low levels of internationalisation, this paper shows that family ownership can generate opportunities for international entrepreneurship related to the exploitation abroad of the expertise and social capital developed at home. Specifically, it argues that family character favours international expansion in at least three ways: (1) by granting more freedom to the managers of the company to develop their business model; (2) by facilitating the transfer to, and exploitation of, this model in foreign markets; and (3) by making the adoption of governance structures based upon trust easier. Drawing on a comparison between the business history of selected Spanish and Italian ‘new multinationals’, support is found for these hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Nicholas Alexander's (2011. British overseas retailing, 1900–60: International firm characteristics, market selections and entry modes. Business History, 53, 530–556) survey of British overseas retailers from 1900 to 1960 provides pathbreaking new evidence of international retailing activity during the first globalisation boom. The article surveys this and other recent evidence, and confirms that international retailing was far more significant up to 1929 than previously thought. This activity was overwhelmingly undertaken by non-retailers, however, and hence by multinationals whose advantages in retailing were fundamentally unsustainable over the long run. Even the department store format, the principal retail innovation of the period, was not internationalised primarily by multinationals. Rather it was diffused via indigenous entrepreneurs, driven by a rapidly growing global demand for western style fashion and dress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing literature has identified a number of exogenous advantages that enabled US firms to dominate the global film industry. This article explores how these firms actually operated in their largest foreign market, and in doing so looks for evidence of endogenous advantages that may have enabled some US firms to outperform their rivals. It finds that firms which developed the most distinct local element to their production portfolios typically achieved a greater share of the British market. However, it does not find evidence that locally-based producers were any more effective at developing such locally-themed films than those based in Hollywood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses a major topic in business history: the strategies used by multinational telecommunications companies to establish themselves on the world stage. It seeks to explore two interconnected issues: how a new entrant-ITT-used the immature market of Spain in its strategy for expansion, and how Spanish national institutions and government regulation influenced this process. With the backing of the US banks and government, ITT created a Spanish firm-the Compania Telefonica Nacional de Espana-in 1924 to keep European competitors at bay and to win a licence to modernise and operate the telephone system in a backward country. The Spanish government granted ITT a monopoly concession, which remained unaltered for 20 years in spite of political changes. This was the first step in ITT's conquest of the world market and in its conversion into a multinational. Company strategy, government institutions and technological innovation played a crucial role in ITT's implantation on a worldwide scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]