Economic culture and its transfer: an overview of the Americanisation of the European economy, 1900–2005

Abstract

Americanisation is the (selected and adapted) transfer of values from the US to Europe. While this model is well established in cultural history, economist and economic historians had difficulties with this concept. However, the book's title ‘Culture Matters!’ is the latest insight of distinguished economists such as Michael E. Porter, Jeffrey Sachs, Francis Fukuyama and others.1 The contributors to this issue not only agree, but try to provide an answer to the question that is asked in the subtitle of the book: ‘How Values Shape Human Progress’. More precisely, they ask how American values influenced European economic performance during the twentieth century. Europe experienced three major waves of Americanisation: in the 1920s, during the boom-phase 1949–1973, and finally from about 1985 until the present day. By using Americanisation as a cultural concept, as well as describing the waves, why they occurred can also be explained: the Europeans were eager to learn how to improve their economy during phases in which the US excelled not only in the economic field but also in others (politics, military strength, etc.). Thus, it can be understood how and why rationalisation swept over Europe as a wave in the 1920s, and why the US film industry became dominant; why during the boom European countries set up business schools; why firms changed their systems of government; and finally why since about 1985 Europeans have embarked on a process of privatisation and de-regulation. Thus, Americanisation gives us a better understanding of what has happened and is still happening with us Europeans – and why. The general trend was to become less cooperative and more competitive in all aspects. Why did Americanisation occur in waves? Already by 1914 some branches of American industry were superior to their European competitors. Selected European firms successfully adopted US standards. But what caused the three waves was not action by a couple of individual businesses: it needed a general feeling of American superiority. Cultural, political, military and financial strength provided the background for each of the waves, while they petered out when this background was no longer existent: during the world economic crisis of the 1930s, in the 1970s with the Vietnamese War, and at the time of the financial and oil crises. Americanisation started again when, with the breakdown of socialism, the US emerged as the world's sole hegemonic power, due to the US IT industry, and American ideas on private property and in the financial sector, all of which pressed for less cooperative and more exclusive, private ways of doing business and conducting one's personal life. The contribution shows how rationalisation spread in Europe during the 1920s. For the boom-period 1950–1973, the showcases are the Marshall Plan, mass distribution including the introduction of self-service and market research, management education, de-cartelisation, foreign direct investment and specific changes within internal organisation of enterprise. The last wave is explained by the changed role of finance, both in private life and in the economy, and in technological change. All these changes over time were entrenched in a handful of American values. It was the deepening of these values in the US themselves that, in combination with an upswing of political, military, cultural and economic power, prepared the next wave of Americanisation.

Keywords:

• Americanisation
• transfer of values
• economic ideas

Notes

 1. The book Culture Matters. How Values Shape Human Progress was edited by Samuel P. Huntingdon and Lawrence E. Harrison in 2000. It consists of contributions studying the extent to which cultural values affect the economy. The contributors include besides the editors 20 other distinguished authors, such as Robert B. Edgerton, David Landes, and Seymour Martin Lipset.

 2. Among the most international important examples count (according to date of publication): Schröter, Harm G. The Americanisation of the European Economy. A compact survey of American economic influence in Europe since the 1880s, Dordrecht: Springer, 2005; Locke, Robert R. and K.E. Schöne, The entrepreneurial shift: Americanisation in European management education in the high technology era. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge; Kudo, A. and M. Kipping, and H.G. Schröter, eds. German and Japanese business in the boom years, transforming American management and technology models, London: Routledge, 2004; Barjot, D., ed. Catching up with America: Productivity missions and the diffusion of American economic and technological influence after the Second World War. Paris: Presse de l'université de Paris Sorbonne, 2002; Barjot, D. and Lescent-Giles and de Ferrière le Vayer, eds. (), Américanisation en europe au XXe siècle: économie, culture, politique, vol. 1, Lille: Presses de l'université de Paris Sorbonne, 2002; Kipping, M. and Tiratsoo, N., eds. Americanisation in 20th century Europe: business, culture, politics, vol. 2, Lille: Presses de l'université de Paris Sorbonne, 2002; Barjot, D. and Réveillard, C., eds. L'américanisation de l'europe occidentale au XXe siècle. Mythes et réalités, Paris: Presse de l'université de Paris Sorbonne, 2000; Zeitlin, J. and Herrigel, G., eds. Americanisation and its limits, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000; Djelic, M.-L. Exporting the American model. The Post-war transformation of European business, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998; Kipping, M. and Bjarnar, O., eds. The Americanisation of European Business. The Marshall Plan and the Transfer of US Management Models, London, New York: Routledge, 1998.

 3. Berghahn, V. The Americanisation of West German Industry, 1945 – 1973, New York: Berg, 1986.

 4. Berghahn, V. Unternehmer und Politik in der Bundesrepublik, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985.

 5. See for instance Lipartito, K., ‘Culture and the practise of business history.’ Business and Economic History 24 (Winter 1995), pp. 1-52, idem, (1999). Culture business history and business culture, in: Business History Review 73 (Spring 1999): 126–128

 6. Locke, R.R. The collapse of the American management mystique, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

 7. Schröter, H.G. “Perspektiven der Forschung: Amerikanisierung und Sowjetisierung als Interpretationsmuster der Integration in beiden Teilen Deutschlands.” In Wirtschaftliche und soziale Integration in historischer Sicht, edited by E. Schremmer, 259–289, Stuttgart: Steiner, 1996; idem., “Zur Übertragbarkeit sozialhistorischer Konzepte in die Wirtschaftsgeschichte. Amerikanisierung und Sowjetisierung in deutschen Betrieben 1945–1975.” In Amerikanisierung und Sowjetisierung. Eine vergleichende Fragestellung zur deutschen Nachkriegsgeschichte, edited by K.H. Jarausch and H. Siegrist, 147–165, Frankfurt and New York. Campus, 1997.

 8. On Japan: Kudo and Kipping and Schröter (see fn. 1). The proceedings of a Latin-American conference on Americanisation, organized by Maria Ines Barbero in 2002, have unfortunately not been published.

 9. Schröter in Barjot, 2002; Schröter 2005 (fn. 1).

10. In my book on Americanisation (2005) I suggest one more difference in basic economic values: Choice (US) versus ascription (EU) (a trend to exchange the traditionally given social bonds and controls for contract- and market-based bonds of one's own, deliberate choice). However, beyond a couple of indicators, I could not find enough evidence on this, and therefore chose to abandon it (p. 10, 217 f.).

11. Köttgen, C. Das wirtschaftliche Amerika, Berlin, 1925.

12. Djelic (1998). p. 49 (see also in the following).

13. Schröter, Harm G. ‘Cartelization and decartelization in Europe, 1870–1995: rise and decline of an institution’, in: The Journal of European Economic History, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Spring 1996): 129–153.

14. Chandler, A.D. Jr. Scale and Scope, The dynamics of industrial capitalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

15. Both quotations: Eklöh, H. “Der Siegeszug der Selbstbedienung.” Stiftung ‘Im Grüene’ ed. Schriftenreihe der Stiftung ‘Im Grüene’, Neure Aspekte der Selbstbedienung, vol. 8, Rüschlikon (1958): 9–19, p. 17.

16. John Kornblum served as US ambassador in Germany to NATO, and at several international diplomatic conferences on economic questions. Comment by John Kornblum at a conference on culture and enterprise in: Pohl, M. “Unternehmenskulturen. Deutschland und USA im Vergleich.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Frankfurt: FAZ, 2002: 51.

17. Kindleberger, C. P., Manias, panics and crashes: a history of financial crises, New York: Wiley: 182.

18. Financial Times, December 18, 1998.

19. See in more detail Schröter (2005), chapter 6, esp. p. 174.

20. Ibid.

21. In spite of several negative examples, there has not been the full-scale evaluation suggested by the EU as the prime driver for European privatization and de-regulation.

22. We know that this point of view is very European in itself. Those who are convinced by the shareholder value model would claim that shares have no value of their own – that nothing else but the demand for shares creates the value of shares. Only the market decides.