Helsinki Congress of the International Economic History Association, 21-25 August 2006: Session 93 Equipment goods and mass brands American business spreading modernity into France? Strategies

d. American enterprises and the French social system
A few enterprises set about trying to convince the public (especially the government and the unions) that they were not “Trojan horses” which would introduce a “barbaric” social liberalism and that on the contrary, they could contribute greatly to the French social fabric. They tried to project their social activities and their participation in building the French or European “social model”. To begin with, they made sure that they were always on the right side of the evolving social legislations. Some of them went on to implement them with the sense of “social progress” which made of these companies models of “enlightened enterprises”. The first example was Manpower France – its directors initiated a study of temping which resulted in the imposing of strict rules and helped appease the labor unions. Soon after, Manpower France’s management contributed greatly to the formation, in 1966, of the National Chamber of Temporary Employment and to the negotiations with the government on the interim laws³⁶⁰ (in 1970-1971) which, in their final form, turned out to be just a formalized version of the practices implemented by Manpower itself. In the 1960s, the widespread hostility (of the government and the unions) towards temping had all but eliminated it for the next thirty years: “Fought against by all, except by the temporary workers and the enterprises, it was even denied its very right to exist. It took a long and hard battle, spearheaded by Manpower, to slowly overcome the fierce resistance. Gradually things began to change, temping too began to be regulated by laws and an ethic. It was finally accepted by the labor unions and its utility was officially recognized by the law.” And “Manpower [was] the precursor of the major social advances made in this profession.”³⁶¹ Evidently it is impossible to conclude from these fragmentary studies whether the “American social model” had implanted itself in France to enlarge the “French model”, especially as regards the public sector. But we can perhaps say that the larger corporations did worry, due to the fact that they were so “visible”, about their social brand image vis-à-vis the general opinion (political, unionist, civic?) and the intrusion of American capitalism in France.
The computer industry has furnished two revelatory case studies regarding this tendency. Ibm for its part, signed the collective agreement in the field of metallurgy which was an interprofessional contractual code of the Union of Metallurgical and Mining Industries, widely considered to be very pro-employee. The other example is also the clearest and most structured illustration in this regard. Right from the start Hewlett-Packard (Hp) aimed at being a “social enterprise” on both sides of the Atlantic³⁶² and insisted on “a policy of social responsibility.” “The company took its social responsibilities very seriously, be they regarding the personnel or vis-à-vis the country in which it was implanted. HP recruited actively in all the countries it was present in […]. It always maintained that the quality of the production is a reflection of the competence and growth of its personnel and implemented an innovative social policy: it was one of the very first enterprises in the world to introduce the concept of flexible work hours for all its employees, working either in its factories and its commercial branches. It was also a pioneer in declaring every fifth week as a paid holiday. Moreover, Hp also gave its employees a number of other social perks. Over and above the French legal labor participation regulations, Hp France had its own plans for the participation of employees in company results and the buying of company shares at preferential rates. Very open and sensitive to any thing that could help improve work conditions, Hp had long since adopted the notion of job enrichment” and had made use of “quality circles” in its factories³⁶³. For a third of a century, that is, till 2004-2005, Hp France followed a policy which integrated technological advancement with social progress in the Grenoble region, with a workforce which included many technicians, engineers and executives. It was the leading company as regards social reform and was held up as an example to French companies in an era when ideological and social issues dominated the French industrial establishment. In parallel, Motorola too was talking about it own social model which it called “the Motorola Spirit”. The absence of any unionism in its factory at Toulouse (which had 1,100 employees in 1970) bears evidence to a decentralized social relations management, which implemented small work units wherein dialogues could take place and be resolved then and there.
This building up of a responsible brand image added much to the purely factual elements linked to the power of the American multinationals and to the positive perception of their contribution to progress and innovation. This also explains the fascination for American companies felt by the students of the big French business schools³⁶⁴ in the 1960s. They were seduced by the brand name and what it represented: rapid promotions, commercial dynamism, sharp management, in-house training and the pay scale were the five principal qualities which pulled them and gave to this young generation of future executives a positive perception of American capitalism – quite in contrast to the anti-imperialist feelings of a section of the French student body at the beginning of the 1970s.
e. The clash of corporate cultures: a “Frenchification” of American enterprises?
Many were greatly impressed by the American corporate culture, with its reputation for the efficiency of its organization and the willingness to accept vertical (between the managers and the lowest ranks) as well as horizontal (between the managerial teams) tensions – as opposed to the autocracy and anti-unionism (regarding social relations) and hypocrisy (in the hierarchical relationships between executives) which were felt to be rampant in French enterprises. And while American companies seemed to thrive in an atmosphere of open and free dialogue, their French sister-concerns labored under a thick blanket of fear and secrecy. Just before appearing live on a televised duel with a French director of a big American group, a unionist remarked: “The French bosses keep quiet because they are afraid of the public and their unpopularity grows because of this silence. For this dialogue they had to go find a Frenchman from New York.”³⁶⁵ This courage – dare we say the cowboy spirit? – was perhaps their greatest asset. They could mix the entrepreneurial spirit with a willingness to enter into a dialogue because they were supremely confident of themselves – “Many American traits, the vitality, the enthusiasm, command our admiration.”³⁶⁶ This brand image was formed in the post-War period and the French who found themselves bowled over by this American spirit were perhaps not very aware of the bitter corporate relations which had prevailed in the us during the 1930s….
That being said, American managers had also to adapt themselves to the “social culture” and to the hierarchical and institutional modes of functioning within French (and Italian) organizations due to the strong communist influence on the labor unions (Cgt, Cgil) which created a rather unique environment for negotiations and the relationships of power. Unfortunately, we do not have any documents regarding the cultural relations within the management teams of the French subsidiaries of American firms. But there was no “culture shock” nor any tensions to speak of. It is true that during the better years, especially the years between 1950 and 1970, companies had a much larger leeway regarding their social obligations on one hand, and the possibilities of promotion for the executives on the other. At the executive and especially, at the managerial level, though some Americans did find the French somewhat slow in taking to the modern accounting and marketing practices, “there was one thing that struck me repeatedly, the flexibility, adaptability and individualism of the European manager. Since my return from Europe, I see things from a broader perspective.” “I am more open to new ideas. My approach to problems has become, it would seem to me, less compartmentalized, less stereotyped than that of my American colleagues,” said a director³⁶⁷. “I have the feeling that the European businessmen, especially in the bigger enterprises know how to listen better, listen to people, listen to their employees, listen to their clients. They take more time in dealing not only strangers, but also their colleagues.”³⁶⁸ Some clues (as yet too few) would seem to suggest that the “American management culture” was itself not entirely flawless, especially in their management of organizations: according to the boss of Manpower France-Europe, “The American manner of working is systematic, conscientious but also, it would seem to me, more laborious and slower than our own. We seem to be more reactive and more imaginative”³⁶⁹. He seemed to have almost foreseen the slide towards a “corpocracy” felt by many firms at the beginning of the 1980s, when they found themselves getting clogged by a management of “procedures” and “reporting”.

Conclusion
Still pending

1 5000. Classement des premières sociétés françaises et européennes, 1982, Le Nouvel Économiste, November 1982, p.13.

2 Ibidem, p. 6.

3 Cf. Catherine Hodeir, « En route pour le Pavillon américain », in Madeleine Rebérioux & Pascal Ory (eds.), Le Centenaire de l’Exposition universelle de Paris de 1889, special issue of the journal Le Mouvement social, Paris, 1989.

4 Several books were published as part of the preparations for the congress at Buenos Aires on the International Association of Economic History, including: Dominique Barjot (ed.), Catching up with America. Productivity Missions and the Diffusion of American Economic and Technological Influence after the Second World War, Paris, Preses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2002. Dominique Barjot & Christophe Réveillard (eds.), L’américanisation de l’Europe occidentale au xx^e siècle: Mythe et réalité, Paris, Preses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2002. Matthias Kipping & Ove Bjarnar (eds.), The Americanization of European Business 1948-1960: The Marshall Plan and the transfer of us management models, London, Routledge, 1998. Cf. also Jonathan Zeitlin & G. Herrigel (eds.), Americanization and its Limits, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000 (particularly: Matthias Kipping, “A slow and difficult process: The Americanization of the French steel-producing and using industries after the Second World War”, pp. 209-235). Marie-Laure Djelic, Exporting the American Model. The Postwar Transformation of European Business, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998. Richard Kuisel, Seducing the French. The Dilemma of Americanization, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1993.

5 Mira Wilkins, “Defining a firm: history and theory”, in Peter Hertner & Geoffrey Jones (eds.), Multinationals: Theory and History, Aldershot, Gower, 1986.

6 Mira Wilkins, The Emergence of Multinational Enterprise: American Business Abroad from the Colonial Era to 1914, Cambridge (Mass.), 1970. Mira Wilkins, The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise: American Business Abroad from 1914 to 1970, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 1974.

7 Advertisement for the book by François Hetman, Les secrets des géants américains, Paris, Seuil, 1969, published in L’Express, 29 September 1969, p. 75.

8 Albert Broder, “La multinationalisation de l’industrie électrique française, 1880-1931. Causes et pratiques d’une dépendance”, Annales. Économies, sociétés, civilisations, xxxix, n°5, September-October 1984, pp. 1020-1043.

9 Pierre Lanthier, “Westinghouse en France: histoire d’un échec, 1898-1920”, L’Information historique, volume 7, n°4, December 1985, pp. 212-219.

10 Mira Wilkins, The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise, p. 70-71. The International Western Electric Company became the International Standard Electric Company.

11 Note Investissements de capitaux privés américains en Afrique française, 24 February 1954. From a note made by the American Department of Trade and Commerce in 1953, historical archives of the Crédit lyonnais, Deef 10557/59912. The figures which added up to some 4.4 millions were mainly investments in the wholesale trade and especially, 2 million for transportation (buses and trucks).

12 Mira Wilkins, The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise, p. 140.

13 A trade mission to the United States inked a double agreement: getting the license for Nylon and importing the raw material required for its manufacture. Farben acquired the Nylon license on 23^rd May 1939.

14 Pierre Cayez, Rhône-Poulenc, 1895-1975, Paris, Armand-Colin-Masson, 1988, p. 145.

15 The production of Nylon by Rhodiaceta went up from 800 tons in 1948 to a record 24,000 tons in 1964. It fell to 17,000 tons in 1965 before stabilizing around 20,000 tons since then.

16 The happy outcome of an association between Louis Nathan, a French chemist, and the Omega Chemical Company, Cadum was launched in 1911 and was sold in French pharmacies. Marie-Emmanuelle Chessel, “Une méthode publicitaire américaine ? Cadum dans la France de l’entre-deux-guerres”, Entreprises & Histoire, n°11, March 1996, pp. 61-76. Jean-Pierre Bodeux & Michel Wlassikoff, La fabuleuse et exemplaire histoire du Bébé Cadum, image symbole de la publicité en France pendant un demi-siècle, Paris, Syros-Alternatives, 1990. Cf. also the website [www.museedelapub.org/virt/mp/cadum].

17 Notre usine, l’espace d’une vie, Colgate-Palmolive France, 1990. This book was brought out on the occasion of the closure of this site.

18 Colgate was established in 1806.

19 Marc Meuleau, “De la distribution au marketing (1880-1939) : une réponse à l’évolution du marché”, Entreprises & histoire, n°3, 1993, pp. 61-74.

20 Mira Wilkins, The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise, p. 63.

21 This date (1933) is given in the official history of the Coca Cola company. But, according to M. Wilkins (Mira Wilkins, The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise, p. 51), a factory was established in France just after the First World War and was closed down in 1919-20. The company then gave up the idea of any direct investments and preferred making arrangements with local bottling plants.

22 Gordon McKibben, Cutting Edge. Gillette’s Journey to Global Leadership, Boston, Mass., Harvard Business School, 1998, p. 24.

23 Monique Peyrière, “L’industrie de la machine à coudre en France, 1830-1914”, in La révolution des aiguilles. Habiller les Français et les Américains, 19^e-20^e siècles, Paris, Ehess Editions, 1996, pp. 95-114. Judith Coffin, ’’Credit, consumption, and images of women’s desires: Selling the sewing machine in late nineteenth-century France”, French Historical Studies, n°18-3, 1994, pp. 749-783.

24 Andrew Godley, “Selling the sewing machine around the world: Singer’s international marketing strategies, 1850-1920”, Enterprise and Society, June 2006, n°7 (2), pp. 266-314 (table A2).

25 Mira Wilkins, The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise, p. 5.

26 Mira Wilkins, Ibidem.

27 Michel Rémond (and François Sauteron), Histoire d’une aventure. Kodak-Pathé Vincennes, 1896-1927-1986, Kodak, 1986. The factory at Vincennes closed in 1986. Jacques Kermabon (ed.), Pathé, premier empire du cinéma, Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, 1994. Cf. the website [www.kodak.com/US/en/corps/kodakHistory]. This site says that a branch was set up in France in 1891 and was subsequently transformed into a subsidiary in 1896.

28 Cf. Patrick Fridenson’s chapter in the same book. Cf. Hubert Bonin, Thierry Grosbois, Nicolas Hatzfeld & Jean-Louis Loubet, Ford en France et en Belgique, Paris, p.l.a.g.e, 2004.

29 A year after Timken uk was taken over by Timken us in 1927, a Timken factory was set up in France (1928). Then the American policy of breaking up trusts or cartels which had become too powerful forced Timken to sell off its British and French subsidiaries in 1949. Thus, Timken France became an independent entity, but we have no data on it. Cf. Mira Wilkins, The Maturing of Multinational Enterprise, p. 293.

30 Cf. Alain Beltran’s chapter in the same book.

31 Cf. Hubert Bonin, “The development of accounting machine in French banks from the 1920s to the 1960s”, Accounting, Business & Financial History, 14-3, November 2004, pp. 257-276.

32 In Alfred Sloan, Mes années à la General Motors, 1967.

33 Advertisement for the book by François Hetman, Les secrets des géants américains, Paris, Seuil, 1969, published in L’Express, 29 September 1969, p. 75.

34 Mira Wilkins, The Maturing of Multinational Business, p. 379.

35 Advertisement in L’Expansion, June and September 1969.

36 Advertisements in L’Expansion, February 1969.

37 Advertisement in L’Express, 4 November 1969.

38 Advertisement in L’Expansion, January 1969.

39 The first advertisement published by Clark Equipment in L’Expansion, February 1971.

40 Archives of the Cfao.

41 Eric Orlemann, “Birth of a legend”, in The Caterpillar Century, Saint-Paul, Motor Books International, 2003, p. 174.

42 Advertisement in L’Expansion, March 1971.

43 Advertisement in L’Express, 27 April 1970.

44 Advertisement in L’Expansion, June 1973.

45 Advertisement in L’Expansion, April 1974.

46 Advertisement in L’Express, 1st February 1965.

47 Advertisement in L’Expansion, October 1969.

48 Advertisement in L’Expansion, July 1967.

49 Advertisement in L’Expansion, July 1970.

50 Advertisement in L’Expansion, February 1970.

51 Advertisement in L’Expansion, March 1969. Cf. Bettye Pruitt, Timken: From Missouri to Mars. A Century of Leadership in Manufacturing, Harvard Business School Press, 1998.

52 Advertisement in L’Expansion, February 1969.

53 Advertisement in L’Expansion, May 1970.

54 Advertisement in L’Expansion, May 1970.

55 Advertisement in L’Expansion, February and March 1970.

56 Advertisement in L’Express, 30 November 1964. Du Pont de Nemours launched this synthetic leather, made in Belgium.

57 Advertisement in L’Expansion, March 1969.

58 Infomercial in L’Expansion, October 1982, pp. 88-89.

59 Advertisement in L’Expansion, ?????

60 Infomercial in L’Expansion, pp. 287-289.

61 Advertisement in L’Express, 16 December 1968.

62 “L’image et la communication”, documentary advertising published in L’Expansion, September 1968, pp. 25-31.

63 Cf. L’Express, 25 September 1967, with several advertisements (3M, Burroughs, etc.). Cf. also the supplement Le Sicob of the daily Le Monde, 24 September 1980: “Le bureau saisi par la fièvre de l’électronique.” (The office caught in the electronic fever).

64 L’Express, September 1964, pp. 84-85.

65 Advertisement for Techmatic, in L’Express, 1966.

66 Advertisement in L’Express, 1966.

67 Jean Watin-Augouard, “Saga Monsieur Propre”, in Prodimarques, la vie des marques, website [www.prodimarques.com/sagas_marques/monsieur_propre/monsieur_propre.php].

68 “L’histoire de Procter & Gamble en France”, website [www.fr.pg.com/notresociete/pgf_anniversaire.html].

69 Advertisement in L’Express, November 1965.

70 « Caterpillar listed to its customers and dealers, and its answers to their cries was a series of legendary tractors referred to as the D8 and D9 », Eric Orlemann, “Birth of a legend”, in The Caterpillar Century, Saint-Paul, Motor Books International, 2003, p. 196. If the D8 is available in the us since the end of the 1930s, the D9 is delivered since the end of the 1950s. Caterpillar enlarged continuously its range and thus its market positions: it asserted itself as a key producer of rubber-tired wheel front-end loaders from the 1960s (944A), then also of hydraulic excavators since the 1970s. Eric Orlemann, “Global Competition”, Caterpillar Chronicle. The History of the World’s Greatest Earthmovers, Osceola, Mbi, 2000. Cf. le site [www.motorbooks.com]. Cf. le site [www.cat.com].