mid-1980s in anticipation of the single market, which peaked in 1990, a growing
proportion of which were cross-border in scope (Buiges, 1993). The prospect of
deeper integration through economic and monetary union reinvigorated the
process. Cross-border mergers and acquisitions in the EU surged again from
1995, accelerating towards a new peak in 2000 before declining in the face of
an economic downturn (United Nations, 2000; Acquisitions Monthly, 2002).
Economic and market integration has also led to the creation of new European-
scale companies through joint ventures and, more tentatively, strategic
alliances; indeed, some commentators have predicted that it will foster the
emergence of a ‘super-league’ of European MNCs (Martin, 1998). In pharma-
ceuticals, for instance, developments since 1998 have seen the merger of
Hoechst’s operations with those of Rhone-Poulenc, that between Astra
and Zeneca and the combinations of British-based GlaxoWellcome and
SmithKlineBeecham and Swiss-based Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz. Importantly,
these developments have been far from limited to European-based companies:
MNCs headquartered in the other two poles of the Triad have participated
strongly in these consolidations (Ramsay, 1995; Van Tulder et al., 2001), in the
process creating identifiable European regional units. Effectively integrating
the resulting combinations at European level and securing a coordinated
approach to the market and/or to the organization of production at European
level is, however, contingent on the strengthening of European-level manage-
ment structures and forms of coordination within MNCs.
More generally, as Tony Edwards demonstrates in Chapter 15, the inter-
nationalization of markets and of the organization of production have stimu-
lated the deepening of international forms of management coordination and
organization within international companies. Such deepening has also taken
on an expressly European dimension, more evident in some sectors than others.
Mendez (1994) provides a detailed study of the progressive deepening of
Groupe Danone’s management structures at European level. Elsewhere in the
food industry, Coller (1996) identifies the distinctive coordinating role played
by the European management structure of the European foods business of a
globally spread European MNC. The development of a regional dimension to
the management organization of the European operations of MNCs headquar-
tered outside Europe is also evident. In the automotive sector, both Mueller and
Purcell (1992) and Hancké (2000) underline the coordinating role of the
European management organizations in the regionally integrated operations of
North American MNCs.
Despite the evident regional concentration of stocks and flows of inter-
national investment by MNCs, taxonomies in the international business literature
typically locate sectors and companies within a matrix which accounts for the rel-
ative strength of global and local (i.e. national) pressures operating on the dual
logics of marketing and production (Bartlett and Ghosal, 1992, see also Chapter
2). Porter’s (1986) distinction between companies operating in ‘multi-domestic’
industries, where competition is nationally bounded, and those which are ‘global’
The Eurocompany and European Works Councils 461