Model Management: Vive l'exception francaise!

This week's column from the team at business management portal FTdynamo looks at the role governments have a right to play in the face of global capitalism...

Queen Mary of England said that, when she was dead, the word 'Calais' would be found written on her heart. (Motorists trying to navigate their way through the French port may not always share Bloody Mary's tender feelings.) Today, this little town is making its mark again. Calais has become "the world centre of resistance to global capitalism" (according to some of its citizens) in response to the plans of Danone, the French food giant. The company has announced the closure of the Calais plant where the popular Lu biscuits are made. As many as 14,000 people marched through the town recently to protest against the planned closure and the 570 redundancies this would entail. Danone wants to shut another five of its European biscuit factories, laying off around 1,800 workers in total as part of a restructuring programme. This is not the only example of le capitalisme sauvage to have outraged the French in recent weeks. Marks & Spencer, the UK retailer, announced that as part of its global retrenchment its French operations would close. Unfortunately, employees heard this first on the morning news rather than from their managers. While such behaviour might be common practice for les anglo-saxons, as many French observers feel, such an approach simply would not do in France. France is different. Nine out of 10 people in a recent French poll found this sort of management "unacceptable". Meanwhile, the impish Jose Bove leads his heroic struggle against la malbouffe - junk food - as served up by that great symbol of globalisation, McDonalds. Under intense political pressure, after disappointing local election results and with a presidential election looming, the Jospin government has discussed out loud the possibility of introducing new protections for workers, making such closures and sackings a good deal harder to execute. There could also be substantial new costs for employers - redundancy payments may be doubled, notice periods may be lengthened. Works councils may be given extra powers, and new obligations on companies to offer alternative jobs or retraining for potentially redundant staff may be introduced. Free-marketeers are filled with a mixture of horror and amused disbelief. How could a modern government even dream of introducing such policies? Nothing could be better designed to scare off inward investment. And, the Invisible Hand Gang might add, such madness needs to be stamped on fast, before it catches on elsewhere. Why, those crazy Australians have now gone and blocked Shell's bid for a Western Australian oil company, Woodside, claiming that it is "against the national interest". Really! Anti-globalisation sentiment is not just a question of violent protesters in Seattle, Davos, Prague, Quebec, London or wherever. It is shared on the peaceful streets of Calais, Paris, Sydney and, now, Budapest (another of Danone's doomed biscuit factories is a 100-year-old business in Hungary). If they had ever forgotten the fact, business leaders need to remember that they operate under licence in democracies, and that democratically elected politicians have their own customers to worry about, just as the CEOs do. (Guess what: there's an election coming up in Australia too.) For generations, France has prided itself on its "exceptionalism". French language and culture have to be protected, even if it means holding up an entire world negotiation such as GATT. Now the French are saying "Non!" to some of the more extreme consequences of globalisation. Infuriating as it may be to others, it is their absolute right to do so. As Adair Turner, former head of the UK's Confederation of British Industry, points out in his new book 'Just Capital', European governments have shown that there is no "one size fits all" approach to the management of modern trading economies. Many OECD countries right now would be glad to achieve French levels of productivity and prosperity. Let's not be too swift to condemn those governments who, with varying degrees of success, attempt to assert their own freedom to manage in the face of carping conventional wisdom. It's called democracy. And difference - aka diversity - has a value in itself. As the American freedom fighters almost said in their struggle for independence over 200 years ago: "No globalisation without representation!" FT Knowledge - World Business Education FTdynamo, the new management website from FT Knowledge, where the latest in business thinking is put into context and delivered to your desktop, is now live. Visit us at http://www.ftdynamo.com and register for a FREE two week trial subscription.