Abstract

Bringing together managers from different countries and cultures after international mergers is often seen as beneficial for the development of multinational companies. The article refers to existing approaches in the literature on modern cultural management and the organisation of multinationals to develop a framework explaining when and in which way national diversity affected the composition of the governing bodies and the strategy of the company. It therefore focuses on the nationality of owners and managers and asks to what extent corporate nationalities persisted after the merger and if single national groups determined the strategy. Based on original archival material the case of the Dutch-German man-made fibre manufacturer AKU/VGF/Akzo illustrates that its ownership structure depended to a large extent on political circumstances and that changing corporate nationalities shaped the governance of this company. Our study contributes to opening-up the black box of the composition and organisational structure of multinational boards and the locus of decision making within multinationals.

摘要

在国际并购后，将来自不同国家和文化的经理聚集在一起，通常被认为有利于跨国公司的发展。本文参考了有关现代文化管理和跨国公司组织的文献中的现有方法，以制定一个框架，解释国家多样性何时以及以何种方式影响管理机构的组成和公司的战略。因此，它侧重于所有者和经理的国籍，并询问合并后公司国籍在多大程度上持续存在，以及是否单一国家集团决定了战略。根据原始档案材料，荷兰-德国人造纤维制造商 AKU/VGF/Akzo 的案例表明，其所有权结构在很大程度上取决于政治环境，公司国籍的变化影响了该公司的治理。我们的研究有助于打开跨国公司董事会的组成和组织结构的黑匣子以及跨国公司内部的决策轨迹。