The French Case

Abstract

The assessment of French business experience, as recorded in recent publications, has become rather more favourable than it used to be. Most probably because people tend to assume that technological change and market integration, that have developed in all industrial countries, have closed the gap that existed formerly in terms of management and organizational design between them. And, further, because a number of business historians, working through archival material, have come out with the conclusion that the corporate sector in France has conformed for a longer period of time than what was thought to the general pattern of economic structure and hierarchical organization that was set up at an early date in Anglo-American countries. Thus applies at least to three aspects of business life.