The evolution of big business in manufacturing and some service industries, together with the role played in this by merger and acquisition (M&A) activity has been thoroughly researched and is well documented. However, despite' the increasing economic and social importance of the UK hotel industry, its development has been largely neglected. Therefore, this thesis set out to explore the development of big business in the hotel industry through the study of M&A activities. This study employs the multiple case study approach (four UK hotel companies), using M&A theory as the theoretical framework; extensive historical secondary data and semi-structured interviews were carried out for the study, covering a period of 26 years. The analysis was conducted by synthesising data with the M&A theory, in terms of two levels, organisational motives and macro environmental factors. The findings confirm those in the existing literature on what is encompassed by the term big business and the part played by M&A activity in the creation of big business. They also suggest that in the hotel industry the acquisition of brand name and brand rights is an important motive, one which has been neglected in the general M&A literature discussion. These findings added several new dimensions to big business concepts, through illuminating the role of brand and brand right acquisition in the context of the UK hotel industry. This thesis confirms the utility of deploying the wide range and large quantity of publicly available historical secondary information, which is rarely used. In addition, the application of a qualitative and longitudinal approach, applied to management theory, has broadened the research agenda in the study of hotel business, business history and business management theory.

Les progrès dans la société actuelle, surtout en ce qui concerne le développement des systèmes de communication, affectent la façon dont les organisations communiquent, se rapportent aux différents publics et se présentent publiquement. Dans la présente étude, on met l’accent spécialement sur deux phénomènes organisationnels contemporains : a) la production et la circulation des récits organisationnels, conçus par les organisations à des fins multiples ; et (b)) l’émergence d’actions/activités concernant la communication de l’histoire dans et sur les entreprises. La recherche vise à étudier les processus communicationnels visant à la narration et narrativisation de l’histoire organisationnelle. De façon spécifique, on cherche à comprendre comment les récits de l'histoire participent à la légitimation organisationnelle. Pour ce faire, on entreprend une étude comparative entre deux organisations ayant des projets liés à l'histoire et à la mémoire : la compagnie Renault, en tant que représentante française, et Petrobras, comme représentante brésilienne. On considère que ces deux organisations sont de pionniers dans leurs pays, et portent une dimension nationale et des trajectoires historiques remarquables. A partir de l'analyse des récits historico-organisationnels transmis à travers les publications de ces entreprises, ainsi que ceux diffusés par le biais de leurs sites web et des sites spécifiquement dédiés à la mémoire de chacune d'entre eux, on observe des stratégies éditoriales, narratives, discursives et argumentatives visant à communiquer l'histoire organisationnelle et les modes d'appropriation du passé ayant pour but la légitimation organisationnelle. / Advances in modern society, especially with regard to the evolution of communication systems, influence the way of the organizations communicate, relate to different audiences and present themselves publicly. As part of this study, given up especially to two contemporary organizational phenomena: a) the production and circulation of organizational narratives, reports designed by organizations to multiple purposes; b) emergency of actions / activities related with the communication of history in and about organizations. The research aims to investigate the communicational processes focused on narration and narrativization of organizational history. Specifically, it seeks to understand how the narratives of organizational history participate in legitimizing organizations. To this end, we undertake a comparative study between two organizations, having projects on the history and memory: the company Renault, as a French representative, and Petrobras, as Brazilian representative. It considers that both organizations are pioneers in their countries, bearing a national dimension and recognized historical trajectories. From the analysis of narratives of organizational history conveyed through the publications of these companies, as well as those disseminated through their web sites and site specifically dedicated to the memory of each of them, we observe different strategies – editorial, narrative, discursive and argumentative, introduced in order to communicate the organizational history, and the forms of appropriation of the past, aiming at the organizational legitimacy.

This is the second volume of a dissertation dealing with industrial marketing change processes. The empirical part of the dissertation describes a set of marketing organization changes in Pharmacia Biotech. In 1959 Pharmacia AB launched a completely new separation product for biochemical separation and entered a period of steady growth and development in a completely new business area. By the second half of the 1980s, Pharmacia Biotech AB, subsidiary of the multinational pharmaceutical corporation Pharmacia, had become one of the world's major suppliers of biotech products and services. In 1986, following a sustained period of sharp sales increases and growth, Pharmacia Biotech acquired its main competitor LKB-Produkter AB. The merger process of the two companies triggered off a number of important marketing organization changes. One of these concerned the physical distribution and the stocks of biotech supplies. A centrally coordinated project was also started for restructuring the company's after sales service operations. These two projects overlapped with two other change processes with significant effects on Pharmacia Biotech's marketing organization. In one of the biggest business deals ever concluded in Sweden, the whole Pharmacia corporation was integrated into a large conglomerate, the Procordia Group. During the same period, the company entered a phase of internationalization in which the former country based net of marketing subsidiaries was rearranged and adapted to a new international situation. Regions and sub-regions were formed, and heavy emphasis was put on reorganizing the market organizations in Europe. These reorganization processes are the focus of a historical study of Pharmacia Biotech AB covering the period 1959-1995, including a prologue starting in the 1930s. The story is the empirical part of a study of industrial marketing change processes. It complements a separate analysis volume entitled "Concurrence, Transition and Evolution - Perspectives of Industrial Marketing Change Processes". / Utgör del av författarens diss.

This is a dissertation (consisting of two volumes) dealing with industrial marketing change processes. The study explores a key theoretical and practical problem in industrial marketing; how to create major organizational marketing change in large and complex industrial companies. The study focuses on the interplay between longitudinal, strategic changes in marketing operations and the moving contexts in which they emerge. On theoretical and empirical grounds a number of perspectives on industrial marketing change processes become apparent. In the analysis of a set of focal marketing change episodes, several structural-contextual and temporal focuses are featured. Marketing change episodes are viewed as embedded in a set of concurrent change processes. They are also part of marketing system transitions, building on, while breaking with, the structures of prior changes, moving towards new states of functioning. Marketing change episodes are also viewed as embedded in more long-term, historical processes of change. Putting in focus the industrial marketing change processes, the study embraces the idea of an inseparable relationship between change and stability. The study of the dynamic interplay between marketing change agency and moving contexts concludes with a set of theoretical and managerial issues. The empirical part of the study describes a set of marketing organization changes in Pharmacia Biotech AB between 1989 and 1993. These reorganization processes are the focus of a historical study of the company covering the period 1959-1995, including a prologue starting in the 1930s. This volume complements a separate case study volume entitled "The Emergence and Change of Pharmacia Biotech 1959-1995 - The Power of the Slow Flow and the Drama of Great Events". / Utgör jämte författarens: The emergence and change of Pharmacia Biotech 1959-1995 diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk.

<p>This dissertation examines the rise of the country’s largest beef processor, IBP, Inc., during the late-twentieth century and its effect on laborers, farmers, business, and the communities in which it operated. Though scholars have cited IBP’s technological advances as the reason for the company’s success, I argue that IBP’s unique public relations approach that manufactured the consent of local communities to pay comparatively low wages, provide tax breaks, and in the instance of cattle producers defend IBP’s right to “free enterprise,” provided it with a competitive advantage. From 1960 through the 1980s, the meatpacking industry endured a revolution stemming from IBP’s ability to maintain enough community consent to gain large market shares and draw down substantial profits.</p> <p>Yet gaining and keeping consent was not easy, nor was it linear. At one point or another all of these entities opposed IBP on a myriad of fronts, but their early cooperation aided in creating a corporate juggernaut that often limited their economic or political power. For IBP’s part, the company’s founders and subsequent executive managers fostered a masculine, individualistic sense of corporate capitalism, which I refer to as cowboy capitalism. Executives painted themselves as farm boys and cowboys, as renegades who were bringing hard work and plain talk to the inefficient meatpacking industry. This conservative, bootstrap mentality played well in the Siouxland region of the Northern Great Plains, where IBP began. Just as corporate success is aided by community consent, rescinding consent creates challenges for the company that can temporarily cause a decline, or at the very least roadblock to company growth. Though founders, managers, and key innovators gain critical and laudatory attention for their role in growing American capitalism; extended community support in terms of governmental and non-governmental actors rarely have been the focus of a corporate study. It is community consent, both active and latent, governmental and non-governmental, that supported the cowboy capitalism IBP deployed to start a revolution.</p>

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(経済学) / 甲第20652号 / 経博第552号 / 新制||経||282(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院経済学研究科経済学専攻 / (主査)教授 黒澤 隆文, 教授 渡辺 純子, 准教授 COLPAN Meziyet Asli / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Economics / Kyoto University / DFAM

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(経済学) / 甲第24961号 / 経博第675号 / 新制||経||304(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院経済学研究科経済学専攻 / (主査)教授 黒澤 隆文, 准教授 IVINGS Steven, 教授 坂出 健, 教授 Stokes Ray / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Economics / Kyoto University / DFAM

'Marry - Stitch - Die - or Do Worse' ran a Times newspaper leader in 1857. Yet a significant proportion of the adult female population at this time were surviving without a husband, particularly in London. This thesis focuses on the activities of such women who never married, were deserted or became widowed. Sometimes labelled 'redundant', 'distressed' or 'failed' by their contemporaries, they were frequently unsupported. In the face of substantial barriers to paid employment, this thesis argues that self-employment and small business proprietorship was often a viable option. The evidence presented suggests a somewhat different picture to that often generalised for all middle and upper class women in the nineteenth century - that of retreat into the private sphere of home to become the ‘angel in the house’. A wide variety of sources have been drawn upon to examine women's use of small business proprietorship as a strategy in nineteenth century London, including published diaries, trade cards, opinion pieces, trade directories and insurance records. In addition, it is argued that it is only by following the female proprietor home that we can begin to understand the role of proprietorship in women's work-life strategies. Record linkage has been used to obtain more detailed and consistent information on the families and household's of female proprietors than that available from trade directories or newspaper advertisements. Common stereotypes of women in business in this period relating to age, marital status and so on have been assessed in the light of this evidence. This research has revealed that these stereotypes have some truth in their application to women engaged in the production and typically 'male' trades but that such trades represent only a small fraction of the experience and activities of female proprietors.

L’histoire de La Fonte Ardennaise est celle de la transformation d’une petite fonderie artisanale fondée dans les années 1920 en une entreprise de taille intermédiaire et d’envergure européenne au début du XXIe siècle. Sa création par un ouvrier mouleur est expliquée par l’étude d’un secteur industriel mal connu, celui de la fonderie de seconde fusion, et de la spécificité de sa localisation dans le département des Ardennes.La monographie de La Fonte Ardennaise est aussi celle d’une famille qui met en perspective la trajectoire de deux générations d’entrepreneurs et aide à expliquer les singularités de la croissance, du financement et du contrôle d’une PME familiale. Afin de mieux comprendre ce qui peut être considéré comme une success story, l’effort d’adaptation de l’entreprise à son environnement est mis en relation avec les mouvements du marché et le comportement de la branche.Étrangers aux schémas mentaux des fondeurs établis, Émile, puis Gérard Grosdidier développent une approche commerciale originale qui différencie l’entreprise de la concurrence et permet une logique de croissance externe et interne, ce qui, en creux, propose des hypothèses explicatives à l’échec du modèle industriel local. Mais la cristallisation de l’organisation sur un leader charismatique rend difficile tant l’intégration de nouveaux dirigeants que la transmission du pouvoir à la troisième génération familiale / The history of La Fonte Ardennaise is about a small, traditional foundry founded in the 1920s that grew into a mid-sized business of European scope in the early 21st century. The company was created by a casting worker, and this can be explained by studying a little-known industrial sector, namely that of second smelting, and by the specific features of its location within the département of Ardennes.A monograph about La Fonte Ardennaise also tells the story of a family, highlighting the path taken by two generations of entrepreneurs, and helps to understand the idiosyncrasies pertaining to the growth, funding and management of a family-run SME. In order to better appreciate what could be viewed as a success story, the efforts made by the company to adapt to its environment are juxtaposed with what was happening in the market and with the way in which the branch progressed.Unconcerned with the mental schemes favoured by established foundries, Émile Grosdidier, and Gerard Grosdidier after him, succeeded in developing an original commercial approach that differentiated the company from the competition, fostering external and internal growth, thereby raising implied assumptions that explain the failure of the local industrial model. Yet having an organisation that is entirely focused on a charismatic leader makes it difficult to bring in new management, as well as transferring power to the family’s third generation

Au cours de la période comprise entre la fin des années 1960 et le début du XXIe siècle cette thèse propose, sous l'angle de la problématique originale du transport, une analyse de la dynamique d'un grand système technique et une modélisation historique des réseaux de transport de la Poste. Cette analyse du changement révèle la transformation de La Poste : son rapprochement avec le monde des transports, sa spécialisation et surtout son apprentissage de la concurrence à travers le développement de son activité dans le domaine de la messagerie, de la structuration de ce métier Colis aujourd'hui essentiel pour le Groupe La Poste. Mais à travers cet objet d'étude original au sein de la recherche historique comme de la recherche en transport, cette thèse s'attache également à montrer l'utilité de l'histoire au sein de l'entreprise et les possibilités applicatives de la discipline historique dans la recherche action. L'un des postulats de cette thèse considère en effet qu'une approche historique est susceptible d'apporter un éclairage original et enrichissant à l'analyse du changement : c'est à la fois la transformation de la Poste, au regard des mutations internes qui s'opèrent dans le domaine du transport et de la messagerie, mais également la nature de la relation entre ce transporteur singulier et le monde qui l'entoure qui se trouvent précisées. Si aujourd'hui l'un des enjeux majeurs de l'opérateur est d'arriver à concilier la logique d'une entreprise évoluant en totale concurrence en assurant conjointement un service public, par le passé, ce que cette thèse propose de démontrer, l'un des enjeux de la Poste a été d'arriver à développer son activité dans le secteur concurrentiel et à s'imaginer concurrentielle. Une transformation fondamentalement liée à l'expansion de son activité dans le domaine de la messagerie qui, s'il elle la rapproche davantage du monde des transports, apparaît selon nous comme l'école de la concurrence des services postaux et permet d'interroger l'apprentissage de la concurrence de l'opérateur depuis la fin des années 1970 / On the late 60s till the early 21st century, this thesis describes the issue of La Poste shipment, a focus on the dynamic large technical system and the historical network architecture starting inside the firm. This analysis reveals the considerable change inside La Poste across the years: the evolution of the shipment, the expertise and especially the way how they improve their business because of their competitors. All this lead them to develop their business in the messaging field and to restructure the way of packaging inside La Poste Group. This study reveals that their business has grown considerably over the years and that shipment research has contributed to give them the knowledge inside the company. One of the assumptions of this thesis considers that the historical approach has lead the group to improve their way of shipment and to develop a change strategy : it's the reorganisation inside the group, the internal restructuring of the shipment and messaging, and also the new definition of a relationship between this exceptional way of shipment and the whole world. The aim challenge of the operator is to be able to develop the business of the company trying to have a pole position on the market and insure a public service. This thesis also reveals that one of the major issues of la Poste by the past, was to develop their business and to be identified as one of the leader in this section. This fundamental change linked to the expansion of the shipment messaging, make us consider that the influence of the shipment experience and the competitors postal service had contributed to define the knowledge of the firm, we consider it as a major step for la Poste and allow us to get more curious on the competitor's learning since the late 1970s