"Globalization and Enginerial Capitalism in the Danish Business System"

In business history, the study of corporate internationalization and global integration of markets began with studies of multinational enterprises. This led to a strong methodological focus on foreign direct investments, and only in recent years has “globalization” emerged as a much broader analytical concept that leads to more qualitative studies with a higher sensitivity for political and cultural factors. This paper argues that empirical micro-level studies of different patterns for corporate globalization beyond FDI holds potential to better our understanding not only of the variety of internationalization patterns, but also for an increased understanding of peculiarities in national business systems. This paper focuses on globalization in Danish business history, and it argues that a certain kind of “enginerial capitalism”, in which foreign direct investments was not the driving factor, has been crucial for the development of the Danish business system, and especially for the part of Danish business system that proved competitive in modern globalization cycles. The paper also raises the question to what degree this type of globalization is a peculiarity of Danish business history, or if it is rather to be regarded as a pattern that is also strong in other parts of Northern Europe.