Corporate Responses to Institutional Changes — the Effects of Europeanisation in the Case of Denmark, 1973–2003

Abstract

The European Corporation. Does it exist or not? This apparently simple question requires a simple answer: Any company registered in Europe must be a European Corporation — just like any company registered in France must be regarded as a French company and any company registered in Paris a Parisian company. The problem arises in the moment one tries to include more meaning than just geography. Richard Whittington and Michael Mayer have suggested that in historical perspective the European Corporation might be marked by a particular organisational structure such as the holding-company structure in contrast to the typical American M-form, while Randall Morck and Lloyd Steier have differentiated between the Anglo-American dispersed ownership from the widespread private ownership in the rest of the world —including Europe.¹ But why should the label “European Corporation” be used exclusively for companies with a certain organisational structure or a particular ownership structure just because researchers have found that these specific structures and strategies were quite common in Europe? What makes a French family owned holding company more “European” than a British multidivisional company with a dispersed ownership?