Philips in Australia since 1926: Host country policies and parent company strategy

This paper offers a short provisional business history of the Australian subsidiary of
Philips Gloeilampen Fabrieken NV. It is largely based on incomplete secondary
sources. Starting in 1926 as a company selling imported incandescent lamps, the
Australian subsidiary of Dutch multinational firm Philips diversified into the
production of lamps, radio valves, radios and other consumer products. By the 1970s,
Philips Australia was one of Australia’s largest diversified manufacturing firms.
Decreasing trade protection forced the firm to scale back and restructure. By the
1990s it again focused on sales of imported products. Since the 1920s, the parent
company structured its international operations as a ‘federation’ of diversified
national operations. National managing directors used a high degree of autonomy to
expand the operations of subsidiaries. Inter-country synergies and coordination of
production across Philips’ foreign subsidiaries were limited. This was strategy was
successful in a global market segmented by national trade policies, also in Australia.
But Philips was late in anticipating international trade liberalisation since the 1960s,
while Philips Australia was pre-occupied by the difficulties of merging with the Astor
and Pye groups of companies. Consequently, when the parent firm restructured its
global undertakings in the 1980s, there was no obvious role for the Australian
operations in Philips’ regional production network.