Academic Seminar : Aslı Çolpan, 10th June, 1.30,SOM 1073

Academic Seminar

 

Aslı Çolpan,Kyoto University
Date : 10th June
Time : 1.30-3 p.m
Place : S0M 1073
The evolution and resilience of business groups in economic development

Abstract:

The major aim of this paper is twofold. Its primary goal is to elaborate an analytical framework to understand the evolution and resilience of business groups in different market and institutional settings. It provides an outline to combine the external environmental and internal firm factors that affect the intra-firm strategy process in a national context in an evolutionary manner. In doing so the paper aims to establish the organizational category of diversified "business group" as the major alternative to Chandlerian multidivisional enterprise as the central business organization of modern and maturing economic growth. Despite all of empirical and theoretical criticism that Chandler’s interpretation of firm evolution across different economies over time has faced, the primacy of the Chandlerian large industrial enterprises that adopt the strategic model of related diversification and the organizational design of multidivisional structure remains intact in academic disciplines of management as well as business history. The recent surge of large diversified business groups in such dynamic emerging markets as South Korea and India, the resilience of their counterparts in Europe and the resurgence of conglomerate firms in Anglo-Saxon economies, however, have asked scholars to reexamine and reinterpret the modern history of large industrial enterprises from fresh perspectives.

In the process of achieving its primary goal, the paper also aims to clarify conceptually and classify systematically the intriguing yet confusing category of "business groups" within the broad Chandlerian "multi-unit" organization models in historical as well as theoretical contexts. Despite surging academic interest in the business group organization, current literature often refers to different organizational and administrative arrangements under the single rubric of "business groups." The major source of this confusion derives from scholars’ primary attention to the legal nature and organization form of various multi-unit firm organizations, while paying little systematic attention to their characteristic resources, strategy models and structural designs. The clarification and reclassification of various categories of multi-unit large industrial enterprises should make the analytical and theoretical examination of the roles and conditions for each organizational form to emerge, develop and survive more robust and coherent.