A amulgam of good traits of all management styles is being Roman in Rome.
Excerpts from the below article on internet.
http://www.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/ejrot/cmsconference/2005/proceedings/criticalresearch/Boussebaa.pdf
Upon 'colonizing' firms, the former become cadres. The term 'cadre' originated from the military and, at the beginning of industrialisation, the French firm hierarchy model presented strong similarities with that of the French army (Poirson, 1993: 54).
The term 'cadre' denotes the dominating managerial class, and althoug h graduates from the university system may also establish themselves as cadres, they lack the status and authority of the graduates of the Grandes Écoles. The term 'cadre' differs from the Anglo-Saxon term 'manager' in that the latter focuses on the management of people whereas the former has a more strategic, planning role (Gordon, 1996).
http://www.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/ejrot/cmsconference/2005/proceedings/criticalresearch/Boussebaa.pdf
French management tends to
conform to Trompenaar's (1993) 'Eiffel Tower' model of corporate organisation, whereby French firms tend to be hierarchical, with a rigid, bureaucratic and well-defined division of labour imposed by the upper echelons of the hierarchy (see also Hofstede 1980). State dirigisme is reflected in management in that the latter is characterised by a centralisation of decision-making that is unquestioned, attaching great importance to the principle of the 'Unity of Command' (Fayol, 1970). Thus, French management is based on the principle of control with power concentrated at the top of the hierarchy (Lane, 1994; van der Klink and Mulder, 1995). Cadres are viewed as autocratic, directive. They see the firm as an elite school in which they are the most intelligent and subordinates, therefore, cannot conceivably have valid ideas. Cadres are, therefore, more possessive of their individual autonomy. Their reaction is: "I know my job; if I am controlled, this means they have no confidence in me" (Poirson, 1993). In contrast, British managers attach less importance to being authoritarian and hence have a more participative, democratic managerial style (Lane, 1989: ch. 4).
http://www.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/ejrot/cmsconference/2005/proceedings/criticalresearch/Boussebaa.pdf
Accor: Story of the merger of american and french company
Franck's book details many other experiences in addition to that of Rhone Poulenc. One of the
successes is that of Accor, the hotel chain. It initially got itself into a bad situation by offering the managers of Motel 6, the company it bought out, a handsome benefits package based on maintaining quarterly and yearly profits over a three-year period, by which time the managers on board at the time of acquisition would leave the company. Introducing a theme which runs throughout the book, Franck details this example of "moral hazard" : the American managers of Motel 6 immediately stopped managing in the interests of the shareholder and ran the company solely to increase short-term bottom-line profits to reward themselves with the highest possible bonuses. Capital investment came to a halt, preventive maintenance vanished, rooms were no longer redecorated. In fact, in many motels, the rooms were no longer even swept or cleaned. Regular clients began to prefer to sleep in their cars in the parking lot when faced with the alternative of a louse and rat-ridden room in a Motel 6 which had become known as a hang-out for drug-dealers.
When Accor realised what was happening they sent Georges Le Mener to turn the situation around. He had come to them after leaving vocational school with only a flimsy hotel management certificate. However he had later graduated with honors from the internal Accor training system, one of the best in France. As Guillaume Franck writes in his book, Le Mener arrived at Motel 6 knowing he had confidence in himself, but knowing precious little about the U.S. and even less about the American budget hotel market. He succeeded against all odds. In making a success of Motel 6, Le Mener handsomely paid back the training and confidence Accor senior management had vested in him. Without him Accor would never have made another acquisition in the U.S., but because of him they later purchased Red Roof Inns and they now have more than 10% of the budget hotel market in the U.S.
Accor brings its managers up through a tough corporate university just outside Paris in which the client is king. The company recruits its staff from outside the elite French management schools (les grandes écoles). Pechiney, on the other hand, used the old boy network to a maximum. Pechiney bought American Can in a famously corrupt deal and is a perfect example of all that can go wrong with the French management style. Le Mener bore more of a resemblance to the typical American manager than to any other French manager mentioned in the book. Many of the other French managers mentioned were incapable of functioning six thousand miles away from their "grande école" support networks and they had to be ignominiously repatriated, in a number of cases because their American subordinates
and colleagues perceived so much arrogance that they just couldn't work with them.
- Bharat Singh | rathorebharat
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