Twelfth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

In the last two decades of the twentieth century, global telecommunications underwent major changes, including the passage from captive markets to outsourcing, defined as contracting with a service provider for the management and completion of a certain amount of work, for a specified cost, length of time, and level of service (Oshri et al., 2009, p. 8). If we stick to the national fractions of that world market, we observe remarkable peculiarities, which imprinted differential features according to the countries. This paper examines new episodes of the reorganization of the oligopolistic structure of the European telecommunications equipment industry from the perspective of the French multinational ALCATEL in the 1990s and the first years of the new millennium, after the dot.com bubble, in which the bulk of the academic debate focused more on the scope of outsourcing than on the reality of it, with very different views (New York Times, June 19, 2005). The French multinational ALCATEL is presented as a magnificent example of the transformations that took place on a global scale. The case is used as an artifact to confirm that a correct understanding of the adjustment in the world economy requires elucidating how large companies were restructured. The paper is based on business sources, on reports from large international organizations, on parliamentary documents from various countries and on meticulous work at newspapers archives.