Mapping European Corporations: Strategy, Structure, Ownership and Performance

This book addresses the evolution of the strategies, structures, ownership patterns and performances of large European corporations in a period going from the early 1960s to today. A particular focus is on peripheral countries, in order to understand how the process of economic integration has affected the patterns of growth and the structural characteristics of the largest firms. Drawing on an extensive database, the country studies collected in this issue address the peculiar specificities of large firms in different national contexts, adopting a longitudinal, long term perspective. The book delivers the first results of an international, collective research effort undertaken by several national teams. The Mapping Corporate Europe project aims to provide a detailed account of the structural traits of the European Corporation in a framework which includes (i) a chronological analysis over 50 years, starting with the Rome treaty in 1957; (ii) geographical extension including smaller countries and both Western and Eastern European countries; (iii) firms from other industries in addition to manufacturing companies and (iv) attention to internationalisation of European firms. These analyses will form the basis of a rich description of the developments of large European corporations over the past five decades, using both qualitative and quantitative approaches. This book was originally published as a special issue of Business History