From Corporate Globalization To Global Co Operation

This book is about the need for an alternative to capitalism. But what does that alternative look like? And given the ever-increasing wealth and power of the 1 percent and the fact that corporations are given carte blanche to turn natural resources into profit, is an alternative possible? Tom Webb argues that a massive shift to social enterprise, primarily co-operatives, is required. More than 250 million people around the world work for co-operatives, and co-operatives impact the lives of three billion people. This model reduces almost every negative impact of capitalism — it is a model that works. Webb outlines the principles co-operatives need to hold to if they are to be a successful alternative to capitalism and examines the public-policy changes needed to nurture such a transition, but he remains neither wildly optimistic nor unduly pessimistic. A better world is possible, but it is not inevitable.

In their efforts to internationalize in the emerging global economy, co-operatives not only face a variety of problems that are common to all firms, but encounter specific challenges due to their particular value commitments, forms of incorporation and organizational structures. These features of cooperatives are generally seen as a major source of competitive disadvantages and may cause significant trade-offs, forcing cooperatives to choose between living up to their principles of member ownership and control and remaining economically viable. Critics argue that such trade-offs signal the increasing irrelevance of cooperatives in a global economy. Advocates, however, counter that cooperatives may have unique competitive advantages which can be exploited in a global economy and that current trade-offs facing cooperatives can be overcome with the development of new international and transnational cooperative institutions and practices. Cooperatives, they claim, represent a much more sustainable and equitable form of production and may form the basis for viable, alternative approaches to development. This collection examines these debates about the roles of cooperatives in our increasingly global economy.

The twenty-first century global community is confronted with unprecedented challenges as well as unique opportunities. The degree to which it can establish and institutionalize norms and mechanisms designed to promote and sustain meaningful global cooperation will determine the future course of civilization. This volume brings together a broad range of scholars to highlight some of the areas of contemporary transnational cooperation and to examine the scope and levels at which cooperation can and does take place. The study examines the issue of weapons of mass destruction, explores the promises of biotechnology and space technology, and investigates the roles of global conventions and institutions as strategies for addressing the common threats facing the international system. In short, the volume raises important, timely issues regarding the challenges and opportunities confronting the global community which both policy makers and academicians will find informative and thought-provoking in their efforts to understand the nature and complexity of the twenty-first century global community.

Richard Williams surveys the history of the cooperative movement from its origins in the 18th century and deals with the theory of cooperation, as contrasted with the 'Standard Economic Model', based on competition. The book contains the results of field studies of a number of successful cooperatives both in the developed and developing world. It includes insights from personal interviews of cooperative members and concludes by considering the successes and challenges of the cooperative movement as an alternative to the global neo-colonialism and imperialism that now characterizes free-market capitalist approaches to globalization. The book considers democratic and local control of essential economic activities such as the production, distribution, and retailing of goods and services. It suggests that cooperative approaches to these economic activities are already reducing poverty and resulting in equitable distributions of wealth and income without plundering the resources of developing countries.

Building on the impressive first edition, this revised and updated book examines a wide range of highly topical issues. Dr Panic questions whether economic prosperity, social wellbeing and peace are sustainable given existing national attitudes, institutions and policies, and explores the changes needed to prevent another global economic collapse.

Since the global financial crisis of 2008/09, international cooperation has failed to curb volatile financial markets. Changes in the global rules of finance discussed in the G20 during the last decade remain limited, and it is uncertain whether they are suitable to help mitigate and manage future crises to come. This book offers an alternative to the popular notion that this failure is the result of the 'nature' of the international system, the clash of national egoisms, or lack of leadership. It instead investigates problems of international cooperation by looking at their deeper structural origins in the competition of different models of capitalism. US finance-led, EU integration-led, and East Asian state-led capitalism complement each other globally but have conflicting preferences on how to regulate international finance. This interdependence of capitalist models is relatively stable but also prone to crises caused by volatile financial flows, global economic imbalances, and 'currency wars'. By bringing together approaches from International Political Economy and Comparative Capitalism, this book shows that regulating international finance is not a technocratic exercise of fine-tuning the machinery of international institutions, but rather a political process. International cooperation can only be successful if it goes hand in hand with deep domestic changes in each of these capitalist models.

Critics and defenders of multinational corporations often agree on at least one thing: that the activities of multinationals are creating an overwhelmingly powerful global market that is quickly rendering national borders obsolete. The authors of this book, however, argue that such expectations commonly rest on a myth. They examine key activities of multinational corporations in the United States, Japan, and Europe and explore the relationship between corporate behavior and national institutions and cultures. They demonstrate that the world's leading multinationals continue to be shaped decisively by the policies and values of their home countries and that their core operations are not converging to create a seamless global market. With a wealth of fresh evidence, the authors show that Japanese and German multinationals, in particular, remain only weakly committed to laissez-faire policy orientations and continue to exhibit strong allegiance to national goals in such areas as investment and employment. They also bring to light the consequences of enduring differences in government policies on, for example, industrial cartels, capital markets, and research and development. The authors agree that the world economy is becoming more complex and integrated as overt barriers to trade and investment fall away. But they conclude that the extent of this integration is decisively limited by structural divergence at the level of the firm. The book will be essential reading for those seeking to understand the growing interdependence of still-distinctive industrial societies and the wellsprings of the true global economy.

Growing economic globalisation has increased international business competition and international economic interdependence. From this perspective, many firms have formed business partnerships and most nations have had to re-evaluate their economic interdependence. This book explores changes that have occurred or have been proposed in this regard. It provides new insights into business partnerships and international economic interdependence, given growing economic globalisation, and explores the managerial and socio-economic consequences of those ideas. The contributions in this book have been divided into four parts. Those in Part II concentrate on the specification of partnerships and reasons for business partnerships in the context of a globalisation. The idea of global networks in which some "hard" and "soft" forms of partnerships would appear and mix is introduced and discussed according to the partners involved (nations, unions, firms and consumers) and the economic activities (whether tangible or abstract). Globalisation also has a number of consequences for business co-ordination, in particular when they are based on outsourcing strategies in which cost reduction is balanced with knowledge transfers. These are amongst the issues explored in Part III. The difficulty to monitor and predict the effects of global partnerships tends to increase the importance of cultural and psychological variables such as trust and commitment. Therefore the role of attitudes and perceptions is very important. Whatever the agreement and the conjoined management among partner firms, the attitude of the other agents can produce asymmetric affects on these firms and considerably bias their partnership strategy. Such biases are particularly likely from consumers. Their attitude towards globalisation is not the only bias that may occur. Their loyalty is also an important issue in a globalising world, particularly in the service sector where lots of partnerships have been made on a global scale (eg banks, airlines, leisure). These are amongst the relationship marketing issues explored in Part IV. In Part V, the factors introduced in the previous chapters are considered from a regional and cultural perspective, where nations and regions themselves are engaged in global partnership. In this context, discrepancy often develops between the domestic and the international globalisation strategies, as well as between the capital and labour markets. The resulting complexity is particularly problematic for the developing and peripheral economies. Novel insights about partnership emerge, as studied in this concluding part of the book.