Business Groups in the West: The Evolutionary Dynamics of Big Business

by Asli M. Colpan, Takashi Hikino

Overview

In spite of surging interest in the business group organization among business scholars, economists and historians in recent years, academic research on business groups has to date remained within the boundary of emerging markets.

The major aim of this volume is to explore the long-term evolution of different varieties of large enterprises in today's developed economies in the West. More specifically, the volume focuses on the economic institution of the business group and aims at understanding the factors behind its rise, growth, resilience, and/or fall; its behavioural and organizational characteristics; and its contributions to national economic development.

While business groups, especially those with widely diversified product portfolio, are a dominant and critical enterprise model in emerging and developing economies and have lately attracted much attention in academic circles and business presses, interestingly, their counterparts in developed economies have not been systematically examined. This contempt for business groups in mature market settings stands in sharp contrast to the intensive research that has been conducted on other major models of large modern enterprises in those economies, such as functionally-organized firms with a clear product focus and multidivisional enterprises that have diversified into related product lines. The present book aims to fill in this gap in the literature by adopting a coherent approach to this elusive subject.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198717973
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/22/2018
Pages:	586
Product dimensions:	9.80(w) x 21.80(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Asli M. Colpan is Associate Professor of Corporate Strategy at the Graduate School of Management and Graduate School of Economics, Kyoto University, Japan. She was the Alfred Chandler Visiting Scholar at Harvard Business School in 2016. Her research interests include corporate strategy, corporate governance and business history. Her work has been published in such journals as Industrial and Corporate Change, Journal of Management Studies, Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Strategic Management Journal, Business History and Corporate Governance: An International Review. She is the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Business Groups, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. In 2010 she was awarded the Tachibana Prize for the most outstanding female scholar at Kyoto University.

Takashi Hikino is Mizuho Securities Endowment Professor at the Graduate School of Management at Kyoto University. His research interests include business history, industrial organization and corporate governance. His recent publications include Big Business and Wealth of Nations, Cambridge University Press, 1997 (co-edited with Alfred D. Chandler and Franco Amatori), Competing Policies for Competitiveness: Microeconomic Policies During the Golden Age of Capitalism, Oxford University Press, 1998 (co-edited with Hideaki Miyajima and Takeo Kikkawa), and The Global Chemical Industry in the Age of the Petrochemical Revolution Cambridge University Press, 2006 (co-edited with Louis Galambos and Vera Zamagni) and Oxford Handbook of Business Groups, Oxford University Press, 2010 (co-edited with Asli M. Colpan and James R. Lincoln).

Table of Contents

Part I. Concepts and Arguments1. Introduction: Business Groups Re-examined, Asli M. Colpan and Takashi Hikino2. The Evolutionary Dynamics of Diversified Business Groups in the West: History and Theory, Asli M. Colpan And Takashi Hikino3. Politics, Institutions, and Diversified Business Groups: Comparisons Across Developed Countries, Ben Ross Schneider, Asli M. Colpan and Weihuang Wong4. Business Groups as Networks, James R. Lincoln and Matthew SargentPart II: National Experiences of Business GroupsGroup 1. Historical Frontrunners in Europe5. Britain: Global Legacy and Domestic Persistence, Geoffrey Jones6. Belgium: The Disappearance of Large Diversified Business Groups, Marco Becht7. The Netherlands: The Overlooked Variety of Big Business, Abe De Jong and Ferry De Goey8. Germany: An Engine of Modern Economic Growth, Harm Schroter9. France: A Complement to Multidivisional Enterprises, Youssef CassisGroup 2. Catch-up Nations in Europe11. Sweden: Tradition And Renewal, Mats Larsson and Tom Petersson12. Italy: Enduring Logic and Pervasive Diffusion, Andrea Colli and Michelangelo Vasta12. Spain: Regulation and Ideology as Drivers for Transformation, Alvaro Cuervo-Cazurra13. Portugal: Changing Environment and Flexible Adaptation, Alvaro Ferreira Da Silva and Pedro NevesGroup 3. Western Offshoots14. The United States in Historical Perspectives: The Strange Career of Business Groups in Industrial Development, Takashi Hikino and Marcelo Bucheli15. The United States in Contemporary Perspectives: Evolving Forms, Strategy and Performance, David Collis, Bharat Anand and J. Yo-Jud Cheng16. Australia: From Family Networks to Boom and Bust Groups, Simon Ville17. Canada: The Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall Again, Randall Morck and Gloria Tian

Editorial Reviews

"This is exciting original research from 12 modern Western nations, documenting the co-evolution of business groups with their ambient institutional contexts. The work makes clear that we should not think of business groups as anachronisms of the process of economic development, rather they both react to and shape the surrounding context, and therefore are likely very persistent organizational forms. This volume is of great value to scholars and policymakers alike." - Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School and Director, Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute, Harvard University

"This is an innovative and important book with a solid message. It demonstrates that business groups can live and prosper even in the fiercely competitive environment of advanced economies. It is reassuring to observe that business groups in advanced economies still act as value adding entities thanks to their longer-term horizons in decision making processes. I believe that this book has critical implications for the business executives of large enterprises in emerging markets." - Rahmi M. Koç, Honorary Chairman, Koç Holding A.S.

"Colpan and Hikino have given us a remarkable survey of an essential element in modern capitalism. They provide breadth and depth to the comparative study of the flexible business groups which played and continue to play a central role in our industrial economies." - Louis Galambos, Research Professor and Co-Director, The Institute for Applied Economics, Global Health, and the Study of Business Enterprise, Johns Hopkins University

"Contrary to the conventional wisdom, diversified business groups have continued to evolve and grow in many developed economies, from Continental Europe and Britain to Canada, the United States and Australia. This book provides the best analysis of the reasons why corporate diversification is so resilient even in the face of global competition and deregulation." - Mauro F. Guillén, Director of the Lauder Institute and Dr. Felix Zandman Professor of International Management, The Wharton School

From the Publisher