Abstract

The goal of this paper is to provide both a theoretical and an empirical contribution to the debate concerning the relationship between the financiali¬zation process of the economy and the organizational changes implemented by large multinational enterprises. Our hypothesis is that there is a tight connection between the two elements, and that the analysis of such connec¬tion provides key insights about how to critically interpret the development, in the last few decades, of managerial practices. In order to find support to our hypothesis, we performed an empirical research concerning several large multinational corporations - both some major Italian multinational companies, and some non-Italian multinational enterprises with large scale operations in Italy as well. We conducted in-depth interviews with top level senior managers through which we reconstructed the «organizational stories» of those companies during the last two decades. We also relied on other information sources, such as corporate documents and academic case studies.