The European Subsidiaries of American Multinationals: an Exercise in Ecological Analysis

Abstract

Portentous and abrupt changes in the world economic order have recently rekindled public interest in the globalization of business. Students of international business thus face with renewed urgency the challenge of explaining the interaction between business organizations and their environment. This challenge is also an opportunity: large-scale environmental transformations constitute so many occasions to observe organizational reactions and proactions.

This chapter is an extension of an earlier empirical analysis with John H. Freeman, to whom I am thankful for a solid push-start. I am also grateful to Mark Makiewiez for cool, collected and competent research assistance.