particular societies in which they originated (Ohmae, 1990). Others, however,
contend that whilst the scope of corporate activity may be becoming more
‘global’, the competitive advantages that individual MNCs seek to leverage in
international markets are crucially shaped by the national ‘business systems’
(Whitley, 1992) in which they are rooted.
Earlier debate over these two positions tended to polarize the ‘global’ and
the ‘national’. More recently attention has turned to sub-global processes of
internationalization showing in particular how processes of internationali-
zation are concentrated within the sub-global regions of western Europe, North
America and east Asia that comprise the so-called ‘Triad’ (Dicken, 1998;
Rugman, 2000). This chapter conceptualizes the international company as an
intermediate form of organization on a sub-global basis and demonstrates the
value of doing so for industrial relations analysis. Focusing on one particular
region, western Europe, it argues that the ‘Eurocompany’, a term coined in ear-
lier writing (Marginson and Sisson, 1994), can be differentiated from both the
‘global’ corporation and the international company as ‘national champion’.
The approach taken in this chapter is to examine the Eurocompany from
both ‘above’ and ‘below’. The next section argues that from above, Europe con-
stitutes an economic, political and regulatory space which can be distinguished
from wider, global, processes of internationalization. This forms the context
within which international companies develop distinct European dimensions
to their forms of (management) organization and coordination of production
and market servicing. The third section, whilst recognizing that companies can
be differentiated according to their national origins, argues that from belowthe
Eurocompany is something more than the simple extension of national com-
panies beyond their borders. Crucially, it also coheres around characteristics
which transcend national borders. These comprise the diverse, but over-
lapping, forms of enterprise found in many national economies and the sector-
and organization-specific transnational management practices being forged by
MNCs. As such the Eurocompany is a plural rather than uniform construct.
In examining the relevance of the concept of the Eurocompany within
industrial relations analysis, the chapter focuses on European Works Councils
(EWCs). The evolution of an, albeit limited, European regulatory space in the
sphere of industrial relations is briefly reviewed in the fourth section, focusing on
developments within MNCs themselves. At company level, the establishment of
EWCs represents a major innovation in institution-building at transnational
level in MNCs within a global region. Their scope in all save a few cases is
European rather than global. Yet it has been argued that these ‘European’ struc-
tures are essentially extensions of national systems of workplace representation;
EWCs differ in their structure and operation largely according to the national
industrial relations system in which the parent company is headquartered
(Streeck, 1997). Drawing on evidence from studies of the provisions of agree-
ments establishing EWCs and of the functioning of EWCs in practice, the fifth
section questions this assessment. It highlights the additional, and in some
458 International Human Resource Management