and Spain. The parameters within which such enterprises function have
differed from their private-sector counterparts: for instance, their role as
‘social buffers’ in state policies to maintain employment (Ferner, 1994: 57).
Also, state influenced strategic direction and massive state financing have
underpinned the internationalization strategies of some public enter-
prises, particularly in France.- The loosely structured holding company continues to survive in France,
Germany, the Walloon region of Belgium and Britain in the face of com-
petition from the multi-divisional form, widely regarded as possessing
superior economic properties. In part, this structural form survives for
institutional reasons: the holding company provides a way of mobilizing
capital resources (through minority stakes, for example) in the absence of
supportive capital markets (Mayer and Whittington, 1996). - The multi-divisional form, the prevalent form of enterprise structure
amongst large corporations in the Anglophone economies, is spreading
more widely across countries with ‘insider’ systems of corporate gover-
nance too. Internationalization strategies appear to be an important trig-
ger: in the face of market integration in Europe and globalization of
markets, German- and French-based MNCs are increasingly adapting their
established modes of business operation and management practice
towards those associated with the Anglophone model of the multi-
divisional enterprise (Ferner and Quintanilla, 1998).
A second problem with the social contingency approach is that it leaves
little analytical space in which to recognize that in becoming international,
MNCs partially escape the national institutional configurations in which they
were previously embedded. As Mueller (1994) argues, MNCs play an active role
in determining how they bridge the multiple national environments in which
they operate. In response to economic pressures which stretch beyond national
boundaries, and in the context of limited forms of supranational regulation,
MNCs are developing organization-specific transnational structures and prac-
tices. These ‘organization effects’ (Mueller, 1994) draw on a wider range of
institutions and practices than those found in the home country, including
practices drawn from the host economies of overseas operations, through
processes of ‘reverse diffusion’ (Edwards, 1998, see also Chapter 15). Ferner and
Quintanilla (1998) report evidence of similar developments in structure and
control systems amongst MNCs embedded within different national business
systems within Europe. Yet they add that this process of ‘anglo-saxonization’ is
one that entails distinctive national variation. Such national variation is under-
lined by Harzing and Sorge (2003) in respect of the control systems utilized by
MNCs based in different European countries, while at the same time identify-
ing cross-border commonalities in the internationalization strategies of com-
panies from different countries of origin.
International notions of best practice at the level of the sector are also
influential. Within some sectors a convergence process around a limited repertoire
The Eurocompany and European Works Councils 465