France, Inc.

In French—a language in which even the most mundane things sound complicated and forbidden—the closest equivalent to the word corporation is société anonyme (“anonymous society”). While both terms refer to a publicly traded business, their etymologies couldn’t be more different. The English noun denotes a single legal entity (the Latin “corpus”), while the French term suggests a plurality—a “society” of people aggregated under an artificial name. One emphasizes the individual; the other, the group.

Those of us who obsessively follow our two countries’ on-again, off-again romance know that when it comes to business, France and the U.S. are often hopelessly incompatible. The “corporation,” with its connotations of a solitary human body, reflects the solo spirit on which American business is (however speciously) founded—the self-made man, the rags-to-riches self-starter, the go-it-alone visionary. The American business media expend great amounts of energy measuring and ranking individual wealth. To place No. 1 is not just a validation of financial importance but a cultural one.

On the other side of the Atlantic, French business has historically tended toward a self-effacing reticence. “Business leaders are not public heroes in France,” write Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow in their cross-cultural compendium Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong. “Journalists do not quote their opinions about anything except business, not even the economy.” The authors observe that in the Fortune 500 listings, French companies usually appear around the fiftieth mark. “The same pattern appears in each sector: French business will be second, third or fourth in their category, but rarely first,” they write. “It’s as if the French don’t want to be number one.”

In France, a corporation is above all a social organization. Indeed, the French adjective “social(e)” can be translated as either “social” or “corporate” depending on context. Consider the importance of les syndicats (trade unions): the collective power of employees to bring business to a halt whenever demands are not met is more than just a right; it’s a national pastime. Also consider le cadre, the general term for management. The word itself has socialist connotations. Within a corporation, the term suggests a homogenization, as if individual managers all thought and acted alike—almost as if they were a part of a revolutionary army.

Not surprisingly, the individual employee is marginalized. My junior year French professor told a story of a friend who worked as a secretary in a French corporation and who always addressed her manager as Monsieur and his last name, never by his first name. In fact, she didn’t know his first name. She worked for the same manager for more than ten years—typing his letters, answering his telephone calls, even becoming friendly...