Capitalism and Culture: A Comparative Analysis of British and American Manufacturing Organizations

Abstract

This article reports a study of the effects of socio-cultural factors on business organizations. The difficulties of generating a conceptual framework for carrying out such a study are discussed and a framework proposed. Six American manufacturing firms operating in Britain are selected for study and carefully compared with a closely matched sample of British manufacturing firms. A wide range of hypothesized differences is then drawn from the existing literature and the theoretical framework and tested. The similarities and differences between the two groups of firms from the point of view of organizational structure and process, and the characteristics of the management are reported. The study concludes with some observations on the difficulty of separating out cultural and economic factors in the explanation of the structure and process of economic organizations.