Business and Labor in 20th Century Multinationals: International Regulation, Internal Organization

Panel proposal for BHC 2025 in Atlanta, GA
Business and labor in 20th century multinationals: international regulation, internal organization
Multinationals are a usual target of the literature on business and labor, as many scholars have studied their impact on work conditions and industrial relations, mostly in host countries. The focus of this panel is slightly different. It considers how multinational enterprises from the 1920s to 1990 have become the center of broader practices: the circulation of engineers and technicians, the changing role of trade unions, the response to international regulation of company activities, all of which refer to the internal organization of multinationals. The three papers follow the attempts and results in these three areas and illustrate three successive periods. The first paper is devoted to the appropriation of a consultancy technique by a multinational to control labor in four countries of the Mediterranean space. The second paper explains rather strong trade-unions in a postwar state-owned French multinational are challenged by the further development of multinationalization and oscillate between struggle, adaptations and wider horizons. The third paper focuses on the contribution of international business associations to the failure of many regulation attempts in international arenas.
Suggested chair : Marcelo Bucheli, University of Illinois at Chicago [he has been invited to chair the session, but no answer yet]
Papers :
Management techniques as a business of labour: the circulation of the Bedaux system at the Peñarroya mining company in the interwar years
Francesca Sanna, Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès
French trade unions and the impact of multinationalisation in a state-owned company: Renault, 1944-1975
Patrick Fridenson, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Scyiences Sociales
Key partners: international business associations and the regulation of multinational corporations
Maia Müller, Université de Lausanne and Hagley Library