Documents Clark, Ian 16 results

"An increasing share of the economy is organized around financial capitalism, where capital market actors actively manage their claims on wealth creation and distribution to maximize shareholder value. Drawing on four case studies of private equity buyouts, we challenge agency theory interpretations that they are ‘welfare neutral' and show that an alternative source of shareholder value is breach of trust and implicit contracts. We show why management and employment relations scholars need to investigate the mechanisms of financial capitalism to provide a more accurate analysis of the emergence of new forms of class relations and to help us move beyond the limits of the varieties of capitalism approach to comparative institutional analysis."

"This article examines the responses of national governments to the economic crisis that commenced in 2008. We argue that the current search for new bases for accumulation is leading to reforms designed to weaken the position of labour. Moreover, the tendency towards a weakening of labour's position was already evident across different ‘varieties of capitalism' before the crisis erupted. We discuss the implications for comparative institutional analysis and stress the need for a renewed focus on the underlying dynamics of capitalist economies."

"This article reviews recent development in employment relations in MNCs, within the context of the varied and changing business systems within Western Europe. Focusing on Germany, France, Sweden and the UK, we analyse both the effects of national corporate governance systems on MNCs, and the extent to which MNCs specifically, and globalisation more widely, have affected the nature of national business and employment systems. While elements of a move towards a more 'Anglo-Saxon', economically liberal model of corporate governance and employment relations can be detected in all four countries, this is far from complete. Cross-national differences in business systems within Europe therefore continue to exert effects upon MNCs."

"This article examines the effects of changes in the dynamics of the American national business system on industrial relations settlements in the UK subsidiaries of American multinational corporations (MNCs). While institutionalist analyses of country-of-origin and host-country effects must take account of changes in national business systems, such as the rise of the shareholder value ideology in the USA, empirical analysis reveals a pattern of pathway adjustment rather than radical change in employment relations at the UK subsidiary level. This suggests that although US MNCs are embedded within the American business system, their subsidiaries are not passive ciphers but autonomous sites through which influences must pass."

"Pressures stemming from the country of origin are seen increasingly as the single most important influence on multinational companies, and American managements are famed particularly for their marked preferences for non-unionism and for pay systems linked to performance. The dramatic inflow of American investment into the British electricity industry from 1996 onwards provides an opportunity to observe the development of these influences. In fact, employment relations reform was not driven by the concerns of American owners to any significant degree, but tended to follow patterns already very well established in the utilities sector in the UK. This can only be understood in the context of similar developments in sector-level governance in both countries, and the processes through which this drove international strategies at higher levels, affecting investment and organizational structure."

"The continuing crisis at Volkswagen has attracted widespread attention and concern in its seeming epitomisation of the 'sclerosis' of the German business system and Germany's system of industrial relations in large firms. These wider, systemic questions are reviewed here as well as the key, related issue as to how far, under globalisation, German corporate success can be achieved while retaining its long-established approach towards social cohesion."

"This article examines the impact of contemporary business practices within the American business system on established patterns of industrial relations (IR) management in European subsidiaries of US multinationals, specifically how established firm-level settlements for the management of IR may or may not combine with host-country effects to constrain such innovations. The empirical material leads us to evaluate subsidiaries of US multinationals as a contingent factor indicating that institutional effects at the level of the national business system are likely to be more embedded than the effects of ownership on employment and IR at firm level."

"The ‘disconnected capitalism' thesis constructs an argument that structural tendencies within capital markets disrupt established patterns of relations between employers and labour. This ar ticle develops this argument by conceptualizing how the ‘private-equity business model' (PEBM) further diffuses these connections and trends.This diffusion is so extensive that the interests of owners are now paramount in all types of business system to the relative exclusion of other stakeholders. The article defines and explains the term ‘PEBM' and identifies the theoretical importance of management in managerial capitalism. The ar ticle then goes on to outline how the PEBM disconnects the evaluation of institutional capability and managerial discretion at firm level from the economics of information and direct ownership interests at business system level."