Importing New Ways of Organising Production and Labour: Lessons from the French Asset Management Industry

[From the Introduction]. The present paper uses a particular case study, French asset management industry over the 1984-1999, to provide some necessary conditions for organisational practices coming from one business system to be integrated into another one. The choice of the case study comes from its exemplarity. Financial services are probably the sector where globalization and transformations were the most radical over the last 20 years. Moreover, it is the one sector where European integration is the most advanced. Asset management within financial services is an interesting example, because it is influenced not only from the global trends related to financial markets, but also from national institutional configurations, like the pension system. France is a critical example for investigating change. "Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose": France is often pictured as a country where reform and change are impossible. Showing an example where this actually happened allows drawing some interesting conclusions about the possibilities of importing new organisation practices. The paper is based on a broader research investigating organizational adaptation in the French asset management industry. The material presented here was drawn from more than 60 interviews conducted mainly in Paris from March to September 1999 with investment professionals that were questioned about the changes in their industry. It also builds upon company documents and newspaper archives. After reviewing the transformation of French asset management industry, the paper will identify a pre-condition for successfully importing new ways of organising from another country.