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Creating Knowledge Networks: Spanish Multinational Publishers in Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2012

María Fernández-Moya
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Abstract

Unlike the majority of Spanish multinationals, which have developed only recently, firms in the publishing industry became international in the early twentieth century and have managed to hold on to much of their business, despite the instability of their own institutional systems and those of their principal host economies. Today, the Spanish publishing industry ranks fourth in the world, and its foreign markets continue to grow in North America, Europe, Latin America, and, most critically, in Mexico. The internationalization of Spanish publishing firms was fueled initially by a search for new markets and by linguistic and cultural advantages. With the passage of time, the process came to be built on accumulated knowledge and on the personal and social networks created by Spanish publishers, both inside and outside Spain.

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Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 86 , Issue 1 , Spring 2012 , pp. 69 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2012

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References

The author wishes to thank Núria Puig for her intellectual support during my research and her generous help in the execution of the article. Financial support by Fundación Serra and Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (project SEJ2006-15151) is gratefully acknowledged. I am indebted to María Inés Barbero, Carlos Marichal, Josep Tàpies, Jaime Salinas (of Alfaguara and Seix Barral), Mónica and Gabriel Gili (of Gustavo Gili), Hans Meinke, Leandro Sagástizabal (currently general manager of Argentina's Fondo de Cultura Económica), Carlos Ortega Núñez (FEDECALI—Spanish Federation of Book Chambers), Alberto Díaz (general manager of Emecé), and especially to José Manuel Lara (chairman of Planeta Group), Emiliano Martinez, and Pancho Pérez González (founder of Santillana-PRISA). I would also like to thank the anonymous referees for their helpful comments. Of course, all errors remain my own.

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