France, Characteristics and Business, 2004

France
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité
My great-grand parents left France ages ago they were Huguenots and did not have the freedom of speech and religion. This Dubois family arrived on Charles de Gaulle Airport on January 3, 2001. And checked later that day in at Citadines on the Boulevard Haussman in the 8th arrondissement in Paris. Mid February we moved into a beautiful home in Le Chesnay, 1 mile from the Versailles Chateau in the Yvelines area and 15 minutes west of Paris. In November 2001 we moved to the small town of Marly le Roi, located in between Versailles and St Germain-en-Laye.

Characteristics, France fascinates, irritates and intrigues! It is a very mixed society with a clear difference within social classes. The French like to complain about almost everything in such a way that it becomes almost an art on its own! The French are by nature inclined to bully the weak and to fear the strong. On the contrary it is also a population that knows how to enjoy the great pleasures of life. There is a great interest and spending level from citizen and local or national government both in money and time towards eating and drinking, beauty and clothing, as well as art and culture. Famous writers are Molière, Racine, Rabelais, Zola, Hugo, Balzac, Flaubert, Proust and many others. Painters of unconditional statue are Cézanne, Matisse, Braque, Monet, Toulousse-Lautrec, Manet and many more. The French go to the cinema more than any other mainland Europeans. There are more bakeries, pharmacies and hairdressers per square kilometer than anywhere in the world. No other country has as many different cheeses or wines and also in fashion France still place a dominant role, perhaps less cutting edge than a decade or two ago. Paris still means fashion, Christian Dior, Coco Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent are still names of tremendous magnitude who are every very present on the worlds fashion podium.

French Society
Due to the differences between lower income families the tendency to complain and express strong disagreements resulting for instance in a strike is rather high. There is this permanent feeling of injustice which is carried with them as a chip on many French shoulders. Perhaps this was caused by Louis XIV who envisioned the greatest castles and parks on earth in absolute magnificent locals all constructed during many years by heavily underpaid and undervalued workers! This is still today a big chip on the shoulder of many Frenchmen.
Companies such as Air France and SNCF, teachers, nurses and the National Railroads are notorious for causing major strikes a number of times a year.

Personalities with a significant contribution and impact on France of today are in particular Napoleon: winning great victories while reforming the legal code and the educational system, establishing the national police, giving Paris a new face and encouraging arts and science. Other great ones are Charles de Gaulle a master in expressing “his” view of France as a very special and unique place on earth occupied by brilliant citizens and claiming full independence from everyone including Washington, London or Moscow. Nowadays, 2001, France’s armed forces are outdone only by the US and China in “martial potency”.

In the society itself there is definitely a sense of modernism and the French themselves believe they are the inventor if many international trends! Even today, 2002, France has the lowest penetration of PC’s and consequently the lowest number of Internet users. From a political point of view one could consider France as a rather conservative country, full of itself but rarely is there a notion of political innovation. One reason is that the average top government official or “haute fonctionaire” follows basically the same education today as decades ago, for instance the majority of these government officials are graduates from the ENA or Ecole Polytechnique. As a consequence the government officials in general are delivering excellent work, however it is still extremely conservative. Many companies are still government owned whilst in other countries the same type of services are already privatized such as the state held utilities like water and energy as well as telecommunications.

Many fundamental services such as health care and education are very well organized and are almost completely funded by government or regional government. The French in general are taking these services for granted and sees them as great sources to complain about. In an overall comparison of health care and education between the 3 nations in this paper France is by far the best organized this is caused by a long reigning socialist government and presence of communist at the local union levels. Only a tenth of the country’s labor force is unionized, however they appear to be rather radical, make a lot of noise and create a big impression, currently it seems that these big unions are reaching a plateau and are turning into more moderate bodies that are prepared to negotiate with employers, according to experts. Unfortunately one has the impression that the French are in general not very satisfied with their environment. The country has relatively high income tax rates. The highest income tax bracket is 59%!

In corporate and political life we notice the unified approach on education. In politics the majority of the countries leaders and decision makers are graduates from the prestigious ENA School and in business life one encounters many managers from l’ Ecole Politechnique or L’X and from business schools such as HEC and Essec. Graduates from these prestigious schools are very well organized within its own network, le reseau. Interesting to notice is also the number of corruption cases among well known politicians, Giscard-D’Estaing, François Mitterand and recently Roland Dumas, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the inevitable Jacques Chirac as well as well known business leaders from companies such as Credit Lyonnais and Elf among others. Moreover prosecutors are quitting usually halfway or at the start of the process, is there to much pressure to quit? Attorney Alphen, for instance a capable young prosecutor left al of a sudden early 2002 when he was preparing the trial of the HLM case
(urban development housing projects for the less-fortunate, against Jacques Chirac. More recently one starts to notice that the absence of timely implementatingimplementation government and social reforms, i.e. apparently in some of the government buildings the heating is allowed to a certain height, because otherwise the energy bill will surpass the budget! We are living here in February 2004!

The impact of the homogeneous society is felt everywhere from the early childhood on. Kids are to be taught to be regular and not behave or act too much of a different manner. Parents and teachers take a rather tough stand versus the little ones if behavioral or school performance is different or under par. It is not uncommon to see children being mildly or even worse batten by a parent in public! This is totally unheard of the “children friendly” US.