Corporate governance,industrial relations and trends in company‐level restructuring in Europe: convergence towards the Anglo‐American model?

This article addresses the issue of how patterns of corporate restructuring are shaped by national systems of corporate governance and industrial relations. Using case studies of three multinationals, it sheds light on the question of whether the way in which restructuring takes place is converging towards the norms characteristic of the Anglo‐American model. It is argued that considerable changes are evident among national systems, but that these changes are not all occurring at the same pace, nor are all countries moving in the same direction. Consequently, the way that multinational companies restructure their activities varies markedly according to both the business system in their country of origin and the various host systems in which they are located.