Strategy, Structure and Institutions: British Firms in a European and Historical Perspective, 1983 and 1993

Aims of the study: <br> 1) track the strategic and structural development of large industrial firms in the United Kingdom, France and Germany up to 1993 in order to gain a longitudinal and cross-nationally comparative perspective on strategic and structural change. The compilation of this dataset allows us to compare changes in the strategy and structure amongst large British industrial enterprises with trends in the immediate post-war period and with French and German firms over the 1980’s and early 1990’s;<br> <br> 2) track the development of ownership patterns and the functional backgrounds of chief executive officers of large industrial firms in the United Kingdom, France and Germany in order to gain a longitudinal and cross-nationally comparative perspective on the development of these key dimensions of corporate governance, control and systems of management development and leadership;<br> <br> 3) investigate the relationship between national context, diversification strategy and ownership patterns and the non-adoption of the multidivisional organisational form in order to allow comment on a) the role of national, economic and political factors in affecting changes in organisational structure thereby testing, within a European context, the relative power of the original Harvard theory of the diversified, multidivisional firm against sociological theories stressing institutional influences within and between countries, and b) investigate the universality or local specificity of such relationships;<br> <br> 4) to leverage the outcomes of considerations related to aims 1 through 3 in order to comment on wider debates in the strategy field and the social sciences more widely concerning the possibility of universality/generalisability on the one hand and the imperative of local specificity on the other;<br> <br> 5) to contribute to managerial and policy debates on the benefits of the diversified, multidivisional firm and on the extent of West European convergence on a dominant model of industrial organisation. <br> <br>