Politics and Corporate Restructuring in France and the United Kingdom: A Qca Analysis

The paper investigates corporate restructuring (employee layoffs and asset divestitures) in France and the United Kingdom since 2008, i.e. the beginning of the financial crisis. It analyses restructuring activities in the two countries via the use of the fuzzy sets-Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). The QCA framework seeks to understand outcomes in terms of necessary-sufficient conditions. His findings highlight the political contingent nature of change in the two countries. In both France and the United Kingdom, employee downsizing is more difficult to undertake than asset divestitures. There are necessary conditions for downsizing in France (leverage) and the United Kingdom (ownership diffusion); while there are several alternative, and sufficient, factors that enable companies to undertake asset divestitures. The implication is that changes are easier to introduce when less politically contested – an outcome observed in both France and the United Kingdom.