Societal Differences Redux. Comparing Organizational Structures in French, German, Italian and US Firms

We replicated and extended the path breaking study by Maurice, Sorge, and Warner published in 1980 on Societal Differences in Organizing Manufacturing Units. We also considered the effect of common ownership under the same holding, the changes in organizational structures due to the response to the actual economic crisis, and two new countries, Italy and the US - the latter replacing Great Britain in the original study. Despite thirty years of globalization, the validity of the conclusions of the Societal Effect Approach on the enduring relevance of nationally divergent manufacturing cultures and the need to connect micro, meso and macro levels of analysis when studying structures is confirmed. The merging of the firms under the same holding, indeed, did not lead to homogenization, but to a path dependent strengthening of local identities and structures and, even under the direction of the same top management team, the surviving challenge posed by the crisis was dealt with in societal specific ways. The result was the essential stability of organizational 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 before the crisis.