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Multinationals and the Dutch Business System: The Cases of Royal Dutch Shell and Sara Lee

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2011

Keetie Sluyterman  and
Ben Wubs
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Abstract

The impact of the strategies of multinational companies on the Dutch business system during the twentieth century is described in relation to two fi rms. The fi rst case examines the attitude of the Dutch (in this example, Anglo-Dutch) parent company Royal Dutch Shell toward its international subsidiaries. The second looks at the approach taken by the American company Sara Lee toward its Dutch subsidiary, Douwe Egberts. Until the 1980s, both companies were prepared to adjust their organizations to national traditions and ambitions. However, when these nationally based global fi rms came under pressure during that decade, both changed their organizational structures. Their actions can be seen both as responses to globalization and as attempts to advance that process by simultaneously building international institutions and changing elements of the national business system in the Netherlands.

Type
National Business Systems: Focus on the Netherlands
Information
Business History Review , Volume 84 , Issue 4: Business History and Varieties of Capitalism , Winter 2010 , pp. 799 - 822
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2010

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References

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