Societal Differences Redux. A Comparison of Strategies, Organizational Structures and Personnel Practices in French, German, Italian and US Manufacturing Units

We replicated and extended the pathbreaking study by Maurice, Sorge, and Warner published in 1980 on Societal Differences in Organizing Manufacturing Units. Despite thirty years of globalization, the validity of their conclusions on the enduring relevance of nationally divergent manufacturing cultures and the need to connect micro, meso and macro levels of analysis when studying strategies, structures and personnel practices is confirmed. We also considered the effect of common ownership under the same holding, the changes in strategies and structures due to the response to the actual economic crisis, and two new countries, Italy and the US. To the first, common ownership did not lead to homogenization, but to strengthened local identities, practices and strategies. To the second, the surviving challenge posed by the crisis was dealt with in societal specific ways, even under the direction of the same top management team, and the result was the essential stability of organizational and personnel arrangements, accompanied by the reinforcement of the French and US organizational specificity, and by a minor convergence among the German and the Italian firms that already presented similar structures and strategies before the crisis.