Книги

Debates surrounding institutional change have become increasingly central to Political Science, Management Studies, and Sociology, opposing the role of globalization in bringing about a convergence of national economies and institutions on one model to theories about 'Varieties of Capitalism'. This book brings together a distinguished set of contributors from a variety of disciplines to examine current theories of institutional change. The chapters highlight the limitations of these theories, finding them lacking in the analytic tools necessary to identify the changes occurring at a national level, and therefore tend to explain many changes and innovation as simply another version of previous situations. Instead a model emerges of contemporary political economies developing in incremental but cumulatively transformative processes. The contributors show that a wide, but not infinite, variety of models of institutional change exist which can meaningfully distinguished and analytically compared. They offer an empirically grounded typology of modes of institutional change that offer important insights on mechanisms of social and political stability, and evolution generally. Beyond Continuity provides a more complex and fundamental understanding of institutional change, and will be important reading for academics, researchers, and advanced students of Political Science, Management Studies, Sociology, and Economics.

Over the past decade, Beyond the Welfare State? has become established as the key text on the emergence and development of welfare states. It offers a comprehensive and remarkably well-informed introduction to the ever more intense debates that surround the history and, still more importantly, the future of welfare in advanced industrialised states. Comprehensively revised and re-written, this third edition of the book embraces all of the most important theoretical and empirical developments in welfare state studies of recent years. Working within an explicitly comparative framework, the book draws on a wealth of international evidence to survey what are now the most pressing issues surrounding the future of welfare: among them, globalisation, demographic change, declining fertility, postindustrialism and immigration. It draws extensively on the explosion of work on welfare states that has emerged within the North American political science community over the past ten years as well as giving detailed attention to developments with the UK, continental and northern Europe and beyond. Beyond the Welfare State? remains the most comprehensive and up-to-date guide to the complex of issues that surround welfare reform. It is required reading for anyone who wants to come to terms with what is really at stake in arguments about the future of welfare.

Since the early 1990s, Europe's economies have been facing several new challenges: the 1992 single market programme, the collapse of the Berlin wall and eastward enlargement, and monetary unification. Building on the influential Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) perspective, first elaborated in detail in the book Varieties of Capitalism (OUP, 2001), this book critically analyzes these developments in the European political economy and their effects on the continental European economies. Leading political economists from Europe and the US debate how VoC can help understand the political-economic challenges that Europe is facing today and how understanding these new challenges can in turn enrich and enhance the VoC perspective. Thematically, the contributions to this volume are organised in four sections:
* how the macro-economics of EMU influenced different European models of capitalism,
* how the Single Market programme was received in the different institutional regimes in European capitalism,
* how welfare and labour market reforms are debated and implemented,
* how European capitalism travelled east after 1989.

Preceding this is a spirited defence of the VoC approach by Peter Hall, and an introduction from the volume editors, considering the approach, and proposing extensions and amendments. This book demonstrates that the VoC approach remains, as the editors put it in their introduction, a rich seam to mine, capable of accommodating new developments, and theoretically flexible enough to branch out into new arguments.

Second edition with a new afterword (First published in 1973).

The 1997 Asian Crisis principally affected Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Korea, as well as other East Asian countries heavily dependent on intra-regional trade. Banks and other financial institutions quickly become insolvent, and heavily indebted industrial firms went bankrupt. Many of these firms were affiliated with the business groups of this region, yet most groups did not immediately collapse, indeed they proved remarkably robust, some surviving and even prospering. This book examines these East Asian business groups and their subsequent restructuring following the Asian Crisis. East Asian nations embarked on very different trajectories to this common external shock. The Asian Crisis affected the inter-relationships among the socio-cultural environment, the state, and the market of each country quite differently and had distinct effects on the operations of these countries' business groups. This slow yet divergent pattern of development provides evidence against theories of rapid global convergence. Yet East Asian business groups face an uncertain future. Foreign investors' influence has increased substantially since the crisis, as East Asian governments had to accommodate their demands to keep attracting foreign capital. Governments supervise banks more closely and have loosened restrictions on mergers and hostile takeovers, further strengthening the discipline of the market. Various entry barriers that had inhibited foreign multinationals from competing in national markets were lifted, exposing business groups to intensified foreign competition. Under these new conditions, business groups in East Asia should reconfigure their business structures and adjust their corporate governance systems to regain momentum for further growth. Business groups will continue to be important vehicles for the sustained future growth of this region, and this book presents a substantial amount of new data on this, which will be of interest to academics, researchers, and advanced students of East Asian business, and business practitioners working within the region.

Twenty-first century capitalism has been marked by an increasing international economic independence, and considerable differences between dominant economic systems of coordination and control. In this context, national competition and coordination within industries has increased, but the governance of leading firms, and the kinds of competences they develop, remain quite diverse. This book shows how different kinds of firms become established and develop different capabilities in different societies, and as a result are effective in particular kinds of industries and markets. By integrating institutionalist approaches to organizations with the capabilities theory of the firm, Richard Whitley suggests how we can understand this combination of diversity and integration by developing the comparative business systems framework in three major ways. First, by identifying the particular circumstances in which distinctive business systems and innovation systems become nationally established and reproduced, as well as how changing endogenous and exogenous pressures have affected the major kinds of business systems that developed in many OECD states during the postwar period. Second, by showing how variations in authority sharing with employees and business partners and in the provision of organizational careers lead institutional regimes to affect the nature of organizational capabilities that dominant firms develop and enable them to deal with different kinds of risks and opportunities in particular technologies and markets. Third, by identifying the circumstances in which multinational firms are likely to develop distinctive transnational organizational capabilities through such authority sharing and careers, and so become different kinds of companies from their more domestically focused competitors. In many, if not most, cases of cross national managerial coordination, these conditions rarely exist, and so the extent to which multinational firms do indeed constitute distinct organizational forms and strategic actors is much less than is sometimes claimed.  

As trends toward the internationalization and globalization of business intensify, it becomes increasingly apparent that different cultures manifest very different--yet no less effective--forms of business organization. And while much has been written about the Japanese approach to business, far less attention has been paid to other East Asian business systems. In this fascinating and informative book, Whitley looks at business in its social context in South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong as well as Japan. He explores similarities and differences organizations, markets and societies. The author also compares East Asian business systems with dominant Western practices and considers the international transferability of different business "recipes." Clearly demonstrating how different business practices can only be fully understood with reference to the societies from which they come, this volume will be essential reading for all students and managers concerned with international business, the comparative analysis of organizations, and the social foundations of business enterprise.