Varieties Of Capitalism Corporate Governance And Employees

We live in a 'corporate world' in which powerful business corporations shape and influence the activities of nation states, their national economies and their social relations. But what is it that moulds the activities of the corporations themselves? Do some societies have 'styles' of regulation that enable corporations to operate freely in the pursuit of certain interests, where others are more constrained? And, if so, are Australian companies more inclined to pursue the financial interests of shareholders and owners at the expense of employees and creditors? Corporate governance may be guided in the pursuit of particular interests by many influences, including law, politics, capital and labour and other pressure groups. How these competing pressures balance out varies enormously from state to state. Bringing together the original research by lawyers, political economists and industrial relations scholars, Varieties of Capitalism, Corporate Governance and Employees is a first Australian contribution to these complex issues.

The Varieties of Capitalism approach begins from the premise that economic and business systems are organized in different ways in different countries. These systems include liberal market economies and co-ordinated market economies. The literature comparing types or 'varieties' of capitalist economies has much to say about corporate governance and employment systems. While the varieties of capitalism debate generally ranges across a broad spectrum of different questions and topics, the issues of corporate governance and labour management, and the relationship between them, appear crucial in how different systems are characterised and typified. Can it be said that Australia's industrial relations and corporate governance systems - two institutions which influence the variety of capitalism of a national economy - now belong more clearly in a group with the US and the UK rather than with other OECD countries such as Germany, Sweden or Japan? While this is often assumed to be the case, very little work has been conducted which systematically investigates Australian evidence. This book brings together contributions by leading Australian academics in the area, which together provide the most systematic response to the question to date. The authors examine the question from a number of different perspectives, drawing on a range of academic disciplines. The book brings together corporate law and labour law scholars, comparative employment relations and human resource management academics and political economists. Some of the chapters are concerned with changes to corporate ownership or financing; tracking any associated shifts in corporate priorities. They consider the impact of corporate ownership and corporate governance on workplace practices and attitudes. They also examine the implications for employment practices of the increasing prominence of institutional investors, such as mutual funds and superannuation funds, as owners of Australian companies. Other contributions examine the issue of where Australia fits on the international spectrum of varieties of capitalism from an employment relations perspective. Labour law scholars map the effects which the Australian government's labour law changes over the last decade have brought about concerning partnership relations between employers and employees, and compare these labour law changes with recent pro-partnership reforms in the UK. Industrial relations specialists examine whether the Australian variety of capitalism acts as an impediment to the co-operative implementation of innovative work systems in Australian workplaces.

"This text compares the corporate governance structures of the US quoted company and its European equivalent and the role which employees as non-shareholding stakeholders hold within those structures. It focuses on the incidents of ownership normally exercised by stakeholders and raises questions regarding different responses to the issue of mandated labour market regulation on both sides of the Atlantic. The text considers theoretical and practical issues raised in this context."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Applying the new economics of organisation and relational theories of the firm to the problem of understanding cross-national variation in the political economy, this volume elaborates a new understanding of the institutional differences that characterise the 'varieties of capitalism' worldwide.

This book is about the relationship between corporate governance regimes and labour 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 labour management. Each country-based chapter provides an analysis of the evolution and key characteristics of corporate governance and then links this to labour 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 direction of national governance and labour relations systems. Overall, the book goes beyond the 'complementarities' between governance and labour management systems identified in recent literature, and attempts to identify causal relationships between the two. It shows how labour 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 behaviour. The book highlights the complexities of corporate governance systems and refines the distinction between market/outsider and relational/insider systems.

The author traces the enduring diversity of corporate culture in Japan and the U.S. to national differences in economic history and social norms, and, paradoxically, to global competition itself.

Economics tends to teach that developed countries have good institutions while developing countries do not, and that this is the factor that constrains the latter's growth. However, the picture is far messier than this explanation suggests. Building on the varieties of capitalism framework, this book brings together the tools of institutional economics with historical analyses of institutional evolution of different kinds of property rights and legal systems, protected by different kinds of state, giving rise to distinct corporate governance structures. It constructs institutional development histories across leading liberal capitalisms in Britain and the United States, compared with continental capitalisms in France and Germany, and contemporary transitional capitalisms in China and Tanzania. This volume is innovative in combining both historical and economic insights, and in combining developed country with developing country institutional emergence, dispelling the prevailing sense of complacency about the inevitability of the path of institutional development for the developed areas of the world and the paths that developing countries are likely to follow. This volume will be of great importance to those who study international economics, development economics and international business.

Peter Hall and David Soskice's Varieties of Capitalism has become a seminal text and reference point across the social sciences, generating debate and research around political-economic models. Here, Bob Hancké presents the key readings on 'Varieties of Capitalism', including the original Hall and Soskice introduction, which encompass the key issues in the study of capitalism and capitalist diversity, its origins, and the debates that followed it. Beginning with the broad theoretical arguments around the idea of 'Varieties of Capitalism', the book then goes on to focus on specific empirical controversies, before finally considering recent attempts at rethinking this influential framework. The Debating Varieties of Capitalism Reader is the perfect guide to understanding this set of ideas that have changed the way we look at comparative political economy.