The Large Family Firm in Twentieth-Century France

This survey of family capitalism in twentieth-century France demonstrates that, by using alternatives to managerial structures, especially the holding company, families were able to reconcile expansion with personalised control, without sacrificing efficiency. This article demonstrates that familial control, most usually associated with the staple industries, also persisted in new industrial sectors and in retailing in the inter-war period and into the post-war era. Since by the inter-war period many of the firms in these sectors were large in terms of employment, levels of integration and capitalisation, it appears that personal capitalism should not always be equated with stagnation and conservatism: This survey also shows that the decline of family ownership and control in large-scale companies was not always the product of the quest for scale economies. Indeed, by highlighting the contrasting economic and sometimes political pressures facing firms in a range of sectors, it demonstrates how difficult it is to provide any general explanation of a loss of familycontrol.