Brexit was voted by referendum three years ago, on June 23rd, 2016. Yet, no final decision has been taken regarding the exit conditions of the United Kingdom. It took almost two years for the European Union and the British Prime Minister to find an agreement, which keeps being rejected by the British Parliament. Consequently, the aftermaths of Brexit on the European market remain fully uncertain and companies have to find ways to be ready to face it. Therefore, the aim of our study was to understand how French companies face the uncertainty related to Brexit and how they analyze its potential consequences. More precisely, we wanted to examine if there were any factors that lead firms to implement new strategies in order to face Brexit’ aftermaths in the best way possible and to understand if these factors were impacting their ability to handle Brexit. We also aimed to deepen the question of information channels that are the more used by companies in order to discover if they have an impact on their strategy. Finally, we wanted to understand what kind of strategies were implemented by managers within the companies and how they intended to face negative consequences or seize opportunities related to Brexit. As a result, our research question was: What factors may influence French companies in their ability to handle Brexit? To answer this question, we created a conceptual model and sent an online self-completion questionnaire to French companies’ managers. We asked them some of their firm’s characteristics, how they got information about Brexit and how often, how they perceive and analyze Brexit and what their answer may be. Through our results’ analysis, we showed that some firms’ characteristics have no impact on the answer to Brexit (sector and degree of internationalization) whereas the size impacts the reaction towards the crisis. Moreover, we found that information channels as well as the tendency to search for information also impact the strategy implemented by companies. Finally, our results showed that companies that analyze Brexit as an opportunity tend to implement larger reactions than the other ones and that companies that fear to lose money were more likely to implement risky strategies.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-160751 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Lesort, Elisabeth, Camp, Chloé |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Företagsekonomi, Umeå universitet, Företagsekonomi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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