This book comprehensively analyzes the impact of continuing European integration on industrial relations institutions and outcomes. It organizes an immensely rich body of theoretical and empirical material to sustain its core argument that the governance of industrial relations is increasingly multi-level. Cross-national influences are shown to mix with national ones and involve the European sector and company, as well as Community, levels. Competing tendencies towards 'Europeanization', 'Americanization' and 'Re-nationalization' are identified. The approach is multi-disciplinary and truly cross-national. It deals with both the theory and practice of industrial relations in contemporary Europe.

This comparative study of industrial capitalism is an examination of state-economy relations in mixed economies ranging from the interventionist German and Japanese to the less interventionist Anglo-American. Following the postwar consensus that resulted in the 'golden age' (1950-1973) and ended with the energy crisis, the Anglo-American economies adopted neoliberalism while Germany and Japan remained interventionist. This resulted in the emergence of national types of capitalism. While analyzing the increased competition between them, R.C.Mascarenhas also notes the influence of globalization as well as 'alternative capitalism' with the survival and re-emergence of industrial districts.

Europeanization has often been conceived as a top-down process, necessitating implementation and adjustment at the national level. However, Europeanization can also be conditioned by bottom-up national initiatives. While recent endeavors in comparative political economy have emphasized the resilience of coordinated market economies, few detailed empirical studies have examined to date exactly how different European systems of political-economic governance cope with and respond to an European impetus for liberalization. This original study of the impact of the EU-induced liberalization of service provision on member states argues that innovative national re-regulatory strategies may be implemented in response to Europeanization. In permitting any company registered in an EU member state to provide services throughout Europe, new possibilities were created for the transnational posting of workers from low-wage to high-wage countries. However, high-wage countries could re-regulate the wage levels applicable to such employees. The exact nature of such response strategy is coloured by the respective institutional power that labour market interest associations like trade unions and employer associations command. Therefore, different institutionalised varieties of capitalism generate distinct re-regulations of the Single European Market.
Drawing on detailed case studies of ten European countries, this volume bridges the gap between the rapidly unfolding scholarly debate on Europeanization and varieties of capitalism. It argues that both strongly neocorporatist systems of political-economic governance and statist systems are capable of creating swift, comprehensive and thorough national re-regulations. This applies to Austria and France, but also Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Belgium, and Luxembourg. By contrast, countries with less strongly embedded neocorporatist structures, in which due to organizational deficiencies trade unions face difficulties blocking employer demands, create liberal response strategies, permitting a stratification of wage levels. Hence, both Germany and the Netherlands implemented liberal business-friendly re-regulations.
The volume makes the case for important amendments to existing accounts of Europeanization and varieties of capitalism. Scholars of Europeanization need to incorporate bottom-up re-regulation into their conceptual framework, particularly in response to 'negative integration'. Recent strides in comparative political economy have placed great emphasis on continued divergence, yet this study suggests that even within the presumably unified group of 'non-liberal' coordinated market economies important institutional differences produce very distinct responses in the face of European liberalization.

This book explores how a wide range of countries attempt to cope with the challenges of globalization. While the internalization of globalization proceeds in significantly different ways, there is a broad process of convergence taking place around the politics of neoliberalism and a more market-oriented version of capitalism. The book examines how distinct social structures, political cultures, patterns of party and interest group politics, classes, public policies, liberal democratic and authoritarian institutions, and the discourses that frame them, are being reshaped by political actors. Chapters cover national experiences from Europe and North America to Asia and Latin America (Chile, Mexico, and Peru).

Minns argues that the industrial transformations of Mexico, South Korea and Taiwan were based on the existence of powerful developmentalist states in each. It explores the origins of such states and their dynamics and connects the form of autonomy they enjoy within their countries to the policies they pursue. However, these so-called economic 'miracles' have not and, it is suggested here, cannot continue indefinitely. The causes of the decline of the developmentalist state are already present at its birth.

Sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest and least integrated region of the world, now has fifteen stock markets. Adventure Capitalism examines the economic and political forces behind this trend and discusses the potential consequences of financial market integration for developing countries. Using a political economy approach, it finds that financial globalization presents a formidable challenge for African policymakers, but is also an opportunity with a range of benefits.

Former communist countries in East-Central Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States and Asia have been heading towards capitalism. This book sets their experience against the 'varieties of capitalism' paradigm, which sets out differences between mature market economies. It thereby provides a useful and novel framework for comparing transformation processes and demonstrates how the rather different heritages of the communist and even pre-communist pasts are leading to different kinds of capitalist economies. The book focuses on the former European communist societies but also has chapters on Kazakhstan and China.

In characterising the Japanese way of business, Professor Okumura has made one of the most significant contributions to the study of economics. Following his study of the conversion of prewar zaibatsu to postwar groups of enterprises, he worked on the roll of comprehensive trading companies in these groups, the main banking system and the permanent employment system. However, he is very critical of this way of business, whereas those influenced by him are enthusiastic in its appreciation. This is the first English translation of his work.

During the 1990s, corporate governance became a hot issue in all of the advanced economies. For decades, major business corporations had reinvested earnings and developed long-term relations with their labour forces as they expanded the scale and scope of their operations. As a result, these corporations had made themselves central to resource allocation and economic performance in the national economies in which they had evolved. Then, beginning in the 1980s and picking up momentum in the 1990s, came the contests for corporate control. Previously silent stockholders, now empowered by institutional investors, demanded that corporations be run to 'maximize shareholder value'. In the United States many, if not most, top corporate executives have now embraced this ideology. In this highly original book, Mary O'Sullivan provides a critical analysis of the theoretical foundations for the shareholder value principle of corporate governance and for the alternative perspective that corporations should be run in the interests of 'stakeholders'. She embeds her arguments on the relation between corporate governance and economic performance in historical accounts of the dynamics of corporate growth in the United States and Germany over the course of the twentieth century. O'Sullivan explains the emergence and consequences of 'maximizing shareholder value' as a principle of corporate governance in the United States over the past two decades, and provides unique insights into the contests for corporate control that have unfolded in Germany over the past few years.

Agrarian Capitalism and Poor Relief in England, 1500-1860 examines the evolution of public assistance for the poor in England from the late medieval era to the Industrial Revolution. Placing poor relief in the context of the unprecedented class relations of agrarian capitalism and the rise of a unique non-absolutist state, it accounts for why relief in England was distinct, with comparisons made to Scotland, Ireland, France and Germany. The author argues that poor relief was a substitute for access to land and common rights, a virtual exchange of money as compensation for the creation of absolute private property. In a work both challenging and provocative, Larry Patriquin makes a case for a class-based reinterpretation of the origins of the welfare state. Clearly written and well organized, this new explanation of the 'great transformation' will contribute to debates in British history, Marxism, social welfare, historiography, theories of the state, and the transition to capitalism

This book is about the relationship between corporate governance regimes and labor management. It examines how finance and governance influence employment relationships, work organization, and industrial relations by means of a comparative analysis of Anglo-American, European and Japanese economies. The starting point is the distinction widely found in the corporate governance, business systems, and political economy literature between countries dominated by 'shareholder value' conceptions of corporate governance and those characterized by 'stakeholder' regimes. By drawing on a wide range of countries, the book is able to demonstrate the complexities of corporate governance arrangements and to present a more precise and nuanced exploration of the linkages between governance and labor management. Each country-based chapter provides an analysis of the evolution and key characteristics of corporate governance and then links this to labor management institutions and practices. The chapters cover the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and Spain, with each written by a leading academic expert in the field. By providing a historical review of the evolution of national systems, the contributors provide judicious evaluations of the current state and future directions of national governance and labor relations systems. Overall, the book goes beyond the 'complementaries' between governance and labor management systems identified in recent literature, and attempts to identify casual relationships between the two. It shows how labor management institutions and practices may influence finance and corporate governance systems, as well as vice versa. The contributions to this book illuminate current debates about the determinants of corporate governance, the convergence of national 'varieties of capitalism', and the impact of corporate governance on managerial behavior. The book highlights the complexities of corporate governance systems and refines the distinction between market/outsider and relational insider systems.

Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital presents a novel interpretation of the good and bad times in the economy, taking a long-term perspective and linking technology and finance in an original and convincing way.

American society today is shaped not nearly as much by vast open spaces as it is by vast, bureaucratic organizations. Over half the working population toils away at enterprises with 500 or more employees--up from zero percent in 1800. Is this institutional immensity the logical outcome of technological forces in an all-efficient market, as some have argued? In this book, the first organizational history of nineteenth-century America, Yale sociologist Charles Perrow says no. He shows that there was nothing inevitable about the surge in corporate size and power by century's end. Critics railed against the nationalizing of the economy, against corporations' monopoly powers, political subversion, environmental destruction, and "wage slavery." How did a nation committed to individual freedom, family firms, public goods, and decentralized power become transformed in one century? Bountiful resources, a mass market, and the industrial revolution gave entrepreneurs broad scope. In Europe, the state and the church kept private organizations small and required consideration of the public good. In America, the courts and business-steeped legislators removed regulatory constraints over the century, centralizing industry and privatizing the railroads. Despite resistance, the corporate form became the model for the next century. Bureaucratic structure spread to government and the nonprofits. Writing in the tradition of Max Weber, Perrow concludes that the driving force of our history is not technology, politics, or culture, but large, bureaucratic organizations. Perrow, the author of award-winning books on organizations, employs his witty, trenchant, and graceful style here to maximum effect. Colorful vignettes abound: today's headlines echo past battles for unchecked organizational freedom; socially responsible alternatives that were tried are explored along with the historical contingencies that sent us down one road rather than another. No other book takes the role of organizations in America's development as seriously. The resultant insights presage a new historical genre. Charles Perrow is Research Scholar and Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Yale University. Two of his six books are prizewinners: Normal Accidents (Princeton) and The AIDS Disaster. Complex Organizations (McGraw Hill) is in its third edition. He has written seventy articles and book chapters. Perrow has been a visiting professor at the London Graduate School of Business Studies, a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation and the Institute for Advanced Study.

This book makes a significant contribution to the literature on strategy, management and innovation by drawing together the literature from these three fields and closely examining a critical issue, the importance of a firm's national base at a sectoral level in an era of globalization. Differences in national economic structures, management, firm learning, and firm strategy all contribute profoundly to competitive success. By examining two very dynamic high-technology industries - semiconductors and liquid crystal displays, the author shows how national systems of innovation are of critical importance in determining competitive success.

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.