Management, Work and the State before the 1980s

In 1980, a handful of extremely wealthy families still controlled more than half of France’s top 200 firms. Far from being an anachronism, the way large French capitalists networked together in a combination of family ownership and interlocking directorships and their privileged access to the state were key to the success of French capitalism during the ‘30 glorious years’. Family networking was rooted in the most successful parts of French business culture. One study of 2,103 firms for which records exist in ten different French industrial centres over the whole period 1780–1935 found that 17 per cent defied the ‘clogs to clogs in three generations’ historical rule of thumb, and that there were extreme regional variations in firm longevity: in Eastern France (Alsace, Lorraine and Franche-Comté) over half the firms in 1935 were between three and six generations old, while in Normandy and Northern France the proportion was one quarter. The differences in survival rates appeared to lie in firm culture: those that survived longest appeared to stress practical techniques more, to be run by entrepreneurs with engineering and grandes écoles (polytéchnique) backgrounds, to have introduced social welfare schemes, to have a Protestant work ethic and to have remained under family control (Lévy-Leboyer 1997).