Tiens modèle rhénan versus modèle anglo-saxon. Ca a l’air d’être toujours à l’ordre. Lu cet été et ça m’est revenu à l’esprit à l’occasion de l’acquisition du Français Alstom par l’Allemand Siemens.
Je me demande bien lequel des deux modèles nous attends une fois ce quinquennat passé ? Celui où l’actionnaire est seul maître à bord induisant flexibilité (ou agilité si on veut) et court-termisme ou celui où les parties-prenantes sont plus larges générant des lourdeurs mais garantissant la prise en compte du temps long ? C’est marrant comme le hasard 😇 fait bien les choses : on on dirait que la question est aussi celle d’un pays sans industrie ou d’un pays avec industrie ?
David Goodhart , The road to somewhere. The populist revolt and the future of politics, p.174 (Hurst, 2017)
« The greater weight that shareholders, and stock market sentiment, have in big British businesses means managers are often on a treadmill of maximising short-term earnings. As Bob Bischof , head of the German-British Forum, points out: ‘Many of the best British companies sit on large cash piles. They do not spend them on product development or opening up export markets in the Far East, for fear of an adverse reaction affecting their share price. They prefer to “return cash to shareholders” through share buy-backs or look for mergers and acquisitions, rather than growing their companies organically. If all else fails, they can “bring the company into play” and sell it at a premium.
In Germany even companies that are listed on the stock market are shielded from takeovers, and usually also from their own bosses’ hubristic deal-making strategies, by their supervisory boards, which include worker representatives. The German model is by no means perfect and cannot always prevent managerial empire building—consider Daimler’s takeover of Chrysler—and Germany has a poor record with starting and building high-tech businesses (Britain is far superior in bio-technology). But, unlike in Britain, companies are seen as more than the possession of their shareholders. They operate in a more stable environment and are not, in general, subject to the sort of radical discontinuities that are common in Britain. »
Bassem Asseh 