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14 - Big business and foreign firms

from Part 4 - A national economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2014

By
David T. Merrett
Edited by
Simon Ville  and
Glenn Withers
Simon Ville
Affiliation:
University of Wollongong, New South Wales
Glenn Withers
Affiliation:
Australian National University, Canberra
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Summary

This chapter explores the interconnected themes of big business and foreign firms. It first presents an overview of big business and the key characteristics of big business in Australia. The seminal ideas of Alfred Chandler concerning the origins and evolution of big business are discussed here in the context of Australian experience. The chapter then explores the genesis of big business in Australia. Next, it explains Australia's experience in the light of Chandler's suggestion that American industrial corporations followed a sequence of distinct strategic postures, and adaptive organisational designs, to survive and grow. Australian big business was heavily populated by foreign firms that invested in local production and sales operations. The chapter discusses the relationship between their presence in Australia and the poor performance of those locally based firms outside the resource sector in winning export markets or becoming successful multinationals. It concludes with a discussion of the implications of the rise of big business for economic performance.

Keywords

pastoral export economyAustralia's natural capitalnatural resource industriesexport-led growthpopulation growth
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Economic History of Australia , pp. 309 - 329
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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