Discerning a key characteristic of a European style of management: Managing the tension between integration opportunities and the constraining diversity

In 1991, Thurley and Wirdenius claimed that intemational companies operat-ing in European countries could, and should, make a strategic choice whether or not to develop a "European " approach or style of management. After the acceptance of the Treaty of Maastricht, and with the new European Union preparing to absorb applicants from the European Free Trade Association, their claim is becoming even more important. Not surprisingly, a European style of management, or "European management, " is an important topic for business, business schools, and academic research. While a growing number of publications have been written on this subject, a brief review of the litera-ture on European management reveals a clear tension between "integration opportunity " and "constraining diversity " issues as a challenging problem for managers in Europe. This article investigates whether key characteristics of a European style of management can be discerned. To this end, a conceptual framework is developed for reconciling the observed tension and pinpointing a key common characteris-tic of a European style of management. No attempt is made here to show that national styles of management such as Swedish or British management (Barsoux and Lawrence, 1990) will disappear in the fiiture. On the contrary, we maintain that national styles of management are and will remain part of Europe's diversity (Lessem and Neubauer, 1994). We aim to improve our understanding of how management relates to the European business environment as a contingency factor. In particular, we investigate ways of approaching the above-mentioned management problem in Europe. In a general sense, our research contributes t