Business and Management

The regulation of the labour market by industrial-relations institutions has been an important theme in sociology, political science, economics, and jurisprudence. What has particularly attracted attention from a comparative perspective is the astonishing variety of national labour-relations institutions. This variety, when confronted with persistent economic internationalisation raises two main questions. First, does internationalisation impose pressures for change and, more specifically, for convergence on institutions? If such pressures are at work, is there a superior model the national systems are converging on? Second, under economic internationalisation, cross-national differences in national arrangements may have an increasing impact on national economic performance. Hence the question is whether national labour-relations systems perform differently, and to what extent their performance has changed over time due to shifting circumstances. This book investigates these questions on the basis of a cross-national comparison, including comparable data from twenty OECD countries.

American manufacturing is in crisis: the sector lost three million jobs between 2000 and 2003 as the American trade deficit shot to record highs. Manufacturers have increasingly decentralized productive responsibilities to armies of supplier firms, both domestically and abroad. Many have speculated as to whether or not manufacturing is even feasible in the United States, given the difficulties. This book examines the issues behind this crisis, looking at the emergence of a ‘new old economy’, in which relationships between firms have become much more important. It shows that discussion of this shift, in the media and in the academic literature, hits on the right issues — globalization, de-industrialization, and the outsourcing of production in marketized and in network relationships — but in an overly polarized way that obscures as much as it enlightens. Drawing on the results of interviews conducted with manufacturers in the American Upper Midwest, the book shows that the range of possibilities is more complex and contingent than is usually recognised. Highlighting heretofore unexamined elements of constraint, contradiction, and innovation that characterize contemporary network production models, the book shakes received understandings in economic and organizational sociology, comparative political economy, and economic geography to reveal ways in which the American economic development apparatus can be adjusted to better meet the challenges of a highly decentralized production regime.

After many years in which it appeared to be losing the pre-eminent position it once occupied in the lexicon of the social and human sciences, the term ‘capitalism’ has once again become a matter of critical concern both theoretically and substantively in a range of disciplinary fields. The global financial and environmental crises, and the shifting economic power geometry associated with the rise of the BRICS and the sovereign debt contagion in the Eurozone, for example, have all put the norms, practices and devices of capitalist conduct under the spotlight once again. In the social and human sciences, a revived engagement with the nature and effects of contemporary capitalism received a remarkable boost with the publication of Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello's The New Spirit of Capitalism. This text became something of a publishing sensation in its native France, and later in the UK and the USA, sparking debate not simply about the meaning, significance and effects of contemporary mutations in economic and organizational life, but becoming a reference point in political discussions about the future of the welfare state and the possibilities both of collective action in a ‘networked’ world, and of reconciling the interests of social justice with the ‘laws of the markets’. Such a reception is not as surprising as it might first appear, not simply because the themes of the text spoke to a popular sense of discontent concerning the nature, direction and consequences of the ‘neo-liberal’ experiment, but also because the book offered a comprehensive and subtle series of discrete but interrelated arguments combining sociological and cultural analysis, socio-historical narrative, political economy, and engaged advocacy that chimed with ongoing debates about the meaning, significance and effects of changing forms of capitalism and the role of neo-liberalism as these were being articulated in sociology, management and organization studies, economic geography, and political economy, for example. When taken together these arguments offered some important clues as to how and why neo-liberalism had proven so resilient and adaptable when faced with evidence of its own hubris. This edited book offers the first comprehensive attempt to interrogate both the explanatory power and reach of Boltanski and Chiapello's thesis, and the theoretical and methodological perspectives, tools and techniques they developed, and to do so in relation to the development of neo-liberal capitalism in the period since their original publication, and in particular the culmination of these developments in the ongoing crisis since the financial collapse of 2007. The volume provides both a balanced critique and overview of New Spirit, but also shows how it can be used in a variety of empirical studies to develop new insights into the functioning and regulation of capitalism in the contemporary era. The volume brings together leading scholars from a range of disciplinary fields where Boltanski and Chiapelllo's work has received its most serious engagement. Luc Boltanksi and Eve Chiapello also offer their thoughts on the continuing relevance and reach of the New Spirit, over a decade after its publication, and in the context of contemporary global economic and political developments.

This book is an original study of why and how Nordic countries by the turn of the century rated at the top on many socio-economic performance indexes. Why did they adapt to globalization and the knowledge economy in a comparative successful way? The introductory chapter argues that the Nordic countries have been able to create new forms of economic organization because welfare institutions made it possible to work in novel ways. The chapters on Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden reveal the dynamics and transformations of their national business systems, and the emerging new patterns of interaction between firms, labour markets, and institutions. Focus is on how firms operate globally, how they organize internally, and how they interact with local and national institutions to tap into open innovation networks in highly surprising ways. These case studies show significant differences among the countries but also great similarities concerning how they are able to construct and de-construct complementarities. The concluding chapter interprets comparative findings and suggests how an experimentalist economy backed by enabling and risk-sharing welfare institutions might be further elaborated. The book crosses the usual boundaries between studies of welfare regimes, varieties of capitalisms, and national innovations systems. It also speaks directly to current high-profile policy debates within and beyond the European Union.

This book examines how firms adapt to the pressures of increasing international competition by testing both the arguments on ‘strategy specialization’ proposed in the competitiveness literature in general, and those offered by contributors to the ‘varieties of capitalism’ debate in particular. If different economies are characterized by distinct institutional arrangements — successful firms would be the ones that exploit their comparative advantages and specialize in the competitive strategies facilitated by national institutions. The book begins with an assessment of how many pharmaceutical firms in Germany, Italy, and the UK pursue strategies facilitated by national institutions governing financial markets, antitrust activities, and the labour market. Quantitative analyses reveal that deviant firms, competing through institutionally unsupported strategies, outnumber conforming firms by far. Not only does this finding run counter to the expectations of the competitiveness literature, it brings up a whole new line of inquiry. How can firms compete through strategies that are not supported by national institutions? To address this question, the book combines quantitative analyses with qualitative insights, showing that firms do not necessarily exploit comparative institutional advantages, but that they can successfully circumvent institutional constraints. International markets and individual collaboration on a contractual basis allow firms to compete despite comparative institutional disadvantages. These findings suggest that trade liberalization tends to foster strategy diversification rather than strategy specialization, depending on the inventiveness of entrepreneurs in developing individual approaches toward competing.

This book addresses some of the key issues in the field of comparative political economy and institutional theory: the role of history in institutional analysis, the dynamics of slow institutional change, the limitations of rational design and economic-functionalist explanations of institutional stability, and the recurrent difficulties of restraining the effects of capitalism on social order. In the classification of the ‘Varieties of Capitalism’ school, Germany has always been taken as the chief exemplar of a ‘European’, coordinated market economy. The book explores to what extent Germany actually conforms to this description. Its argument is supported by original empirical research on wage-setting and wage structure, the organization of business and labor in business associations and trade unions, social policy, public finance, and corporate governance. From this evidence, this book traces the current liberalization of the post-war economy of democratic capitalism by means of a historical approach to institutional change.

As we enter the twenty-first century, one of the dramatic shifts in the world system is the increasing openness and interpenetration of national economies and sovereign states. This shift is associated on the one hand with the beginnings of a progressive transfer of certain economic and political functions upward to the pluri-national and global levels; and on the other hand with a countervailing trend to the reinforcement of economic and political life at the sub national, regional level. This book is a wide-ranging exploration of the economic logic and political meaning of these developments, with special reference to a reconceptualisation of the economic geography of the modern world as an emerging global mosaic of regional systems of production and exchange. The steady globalisation of economic activity over the last few decades has intensified the re-assertion of the region as a critical locus of economic order and as a potent foundation of competitive advantage. As a corollary, many regions in the modern world are also beginning to acquire an intense self-consciousness of themselves as socio-political and economic entities, and all the more so as they increasingly find themselves bound together in both competitive and collaborative relationships across national borders. The significance of these tendencies for new kinds of political mobilisation is explored, and their potential impacts of substantive forms of democracy and citizenship in the new world order are assessed.

Understanding the ways in which people save for their retirement is an urgent issue. So much has changed in the last 10 to 15 years, especially in the area of the provision of pensions and retirement income. Around the world, greater and greater responsibility is being allocated to individuals while governments discount their contributions to social security and employers retreat from the provision of supplementary retirement income. In this book, we begin with the behavioral revolution and its implications for understanding financial decision-making and saving for the future. Recognizing the profound implications of this research program, we go beyond issues of risk aversion, framing, and decision-making to consider how social identity and the resources due to people by virtue of their place in society figure in savings behavior. We take seriously the context of environment in which people make financial decisions arguing that this allows us to better understand the coexistence of sophistication and naivety apparent in patterns of retirement saving. Utilizing databases from the United Kingdom, we give empirical life to our theoretical arguments demonstrating how an integrated approach to individual financial decision-making is necessary if we are to address the apparent shortfall in many people’s planning for the future. The book concludes by setting the agenda for the design, governance, and regulation of pension savings schemes consistent with delivering cost-effective solutions to pension adequacy. In these ways, our book is a manifesto for rethinking individual behavior as well as the design of retirement income systems.