Competition & Change最新文献

{"title":"Gaining lead firm position in an emerging industry: A global production networks analysis of two Scandinavian energy firms in offshore wind power","authors":"Samson Afewerki, M. Steen","doi":"10.1177/10245294221103072","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294221103072","url":null,"abstract":"Global production networks (GPN) research has given limited attention to lead firms’ competitive strategies in emerging project-based industries (PBIs). Informed by the industry life cycle approach, the authors develop a process-sensitive approach that unpacks the black-boxed notion of lead firms’ competitive capabilities development processes to address this gap. The approach is operationalized in the analysis of the evolutionary trajectories of Ørsted (Denmark) and Equinor (Norway) in the emerging offshore wind power industry. Analytically, the authors differentiate between lead firms’ pre-entry, entry, and post-entry scope-related and scale-related competitive capabilities development processes. They demonstrate how these processes are shaped by industry characteristics and co-evolve with broader industry developments and extra-firm dynamics. Through this novel perspective, the paper extends conventional wisdom on the role GPNs as facilitators of knowledge transfer and of local and regional capability formation and development. The authors argue that GPNs can also facilitate both knowledge transfer to and competitive capability formation by (lead) firms.","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":"27 1","pages":"551 - 574"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2022-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48522894","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Firm foundations: The statistical footprint of multinational corporations as a problem for political economy","authors":"Timur Ergen, Sebastian Kohl, Benjamin Braun","doi":"10.1177/10245294221093704","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294221093704","url":null,"abstract":"The discipline of comparative political economy (CPE) relies heavily on aggregate, country-level economic indicators. However, the practices of multinational corporations have increasingly undermined this approach to measurement. The problem of indicator drift is well documented by a growing critical literature and calls for systematic methodological attention in CPE. We present the case for a rocky but ultimately rewarding middle road between indicator fatalism and indicator faith. We illustrate our argument by examining two important cases—Sweden’s recent export success and the financialization of non-financial corporations in France. A careful parsing of the data suggests corrections to common characterizations of the two cases. Swedish exports have been reshaped by intragroup trade among foreign subsidiaries of domestic corporations. The growth of financial assets held by French firms is attributable to the growth of foreign direct investment and to cumulative revaluation effects, while what remains of financialization is concentrated among the very largest firms. Based on these findings, we propose a methodological routine that parses data by zooming in on the qualitative specifics of countries, sectors, and firms, while using all available options for disaggregation.","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":"27 1","pages":"44 - 73"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2022-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46556879","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"No strings attached: Corporate welfare, state intervention, and the issue of conditionality","authors":"Fabio Bulfone, Timur Ergen, Manolis Kalaitzake","doi":"10.1177/10245294221101145","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294221101145","url":null,"abstract":"This paper contributes to Comparative Political Economy (CPE) by developing an analytical concept of corporate welfare. Corporate welfare—the transfer of public funds and benefits to corporate actors with weak or no conditionality—is a prominent form of state-business relations that CPE scholarship regularly overlooks and misinterprets. Such transfers should be understood as a structural privilege of business in a globalized post-Fordist capitalism, and an increasingly common strategy through which states attempt to steward national economic dynamism within a highly constrained range of policy options. However, without a well-developed concept of corporate welfare—premised upon the key criterion of conditionality—studies that identify a “return” of the state in industrial planning misrepresent these transfers to business as a reassertion of state influence and control, rather than a reflection of state weakness and subordination. The paper provides the analytical building blocks to properly conceptualize transfers to business, works out the core challenges for empirical research, and provides empirical illustrations of this burgeoning phenomenon from the fields of unconventional monetary policy, privatization, and urban political economy.","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":"27 1","pages":"253 - 276"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2022-05-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44045929","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Book review: Emerging Economies and the Global Financial System: Post-Keynesian Analysis","authors":"Daniel Gay","doi":"10.1177/10245294221102749","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294221102749","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":"27 1","pages":"422 - 424"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2022-05-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45957819","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Book review: Garments without guilt? Global labour justice and ethical codes in Sri Lankan apparels","authors":"Achalie Kumarage","doi":"10.1177/10245294221101104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294221101104","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":"27 1","pages":"659 - 660"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2022-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41521499","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Introduction: New Frontiers of Techno-Economic Rentiership","authors":"K. Birch, Callum Ward, E. Tretter","doi":"10.1177/10245294221082243","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294221082243","url":null,"abstract":"‘In foreign affairs, Japan is often thought of as a big country acting like a small one. Yet that is to miss the significance, range and effectiveness of Japan’s economic statecraft, in which the country not only acts its true size but also does so with much more autonomy and agency than it does in classic diplomacy. Yuka Koshino and Robert Ward shine a truly illuminating light on how Japan thinks and behaves as a geo-economic actor, whether through trade, investment, aid, rule-setting or, crucially, technology. This Adelphi book deserves to be widely read, for it adds greatly to our understanding of a much neglected and under-appreciated aspect of Japanese strategy.’ Bill Emmott, Chairman of the IISS Trustees; Chairman of the Japan Society of the UK; and author of Japan’s Far More Female Future (Oxford University Press, 2020) ‘Groundbreaking work and a penetrating analysis of the geo-economic challenges facing Japan, a frontline country in the age of US–China rivalry and economic statecraft.’ Dr Funabashi Yoichi, Chairman of Asia Pacific Initiative Geo-economic strategy – deploying economic instruments to secure foreign-policy aims and to project power – has long been a key element of statecraft. In recent years it has acquired even greater salience, given China’s growing antagonism with the United States and the willingness of both Beijing and Washington to wield economic power in their confrontation. This trend has particular significance for Japan, due to its often tense political relationship with China, which remains its largest trading partner. While Japan’s post-war geo-economic performance often failed to match its status as one of the world’s largest economies, more recently Tokyo has demonstrated increased geo-economic agency and effectiveness. In this Adelphi book, Yuka Koshino and Robert Ward draw on multiple disciplines – including economics, political economy, foreign policy and security policy – and interviews with key policymakers to examine Japan’s geo-economic power in the context of great-power competition between the US and China. They examine Japan’s previous underperformance, how Tokyo’s understanding of geo-economics has evolved and, given constraints on its national power projection, what actions Japan might feasibly take to become a more effective geo-economic actor. Their conclusions will be of direct interest not only for all those concerned with Japanese grand strategy and the Asia-Pacific, but also for those middle powers seeking to navigate great-power competition in the coming decades.","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2022-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"65649087","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Accounting infrastructures and the negotiation of social and economic returns under financialization: The case of impact investing","authors":"A. Guter-Sandu","doi":"10.1177/10245294221085636","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294221085636","url":null,"abstract":"Impact investing has emerged as a topical subject-matter for scholars working at the intersection between finance and social policy. By and large, it is seen as a product of financialization: some argue that the social is colonized by financial actors and methods, others see it as a site where boundary work produces a state of value plurality in which competing values—social and financial—co-exist. This article takes the latter perspective further and unpacks the endogenous dynamics underpinning the creation of social values in impact investing programs. It analyzes how high-level organizations in the field prescribed specific social impact valuation processes and mechanisms for collecting, measuring, and reporting data about value creation. It argues that the social values circulating in the impact investing field emerge from the interplay between a wide array of stakeholders, impact investors included. The social impact accounting tools that capture them materialize therefore as sites of political battles and negotiations between stakeholders, with both emancipatory but also exploitative potential. This has consequences upon our understanding of how financialization travels and how the social dynamics underpinning accounting devices (re)draw boundaries between competing values and fields.","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":"27 1","pages":"205 - 223"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2022-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44817016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Introduction to the special section on Financialization, state action and the contested policy practices of neoliberalization","authors":"C. Berry, Inga Rademacher, Matthew Watson","doi":"10.1177/10245294221086864","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294221086864","url":null,"abstract":"Warwick, UK The view that neoliberalism has become, and remains, the dominant ideology of economic statecraft in most parts of the world is widespread within critical social science scholarship. But there is no settled view on the nature of ‘ the neoliberal state ’ (see Plant, 2009; Weiss, 2012). Is there such a thing? Despite many scholars ’ con fi dence in the in fl uence of neoliberalism on economic and social policy across many countries, the sheer diversity of policy practices and institutional structures to which the label ‘ neoliberal ’ has been applied means the archetypal state form of neoliberalism is dif fi cult to discern. This is partly because the de fi ning characteristics of neoliberalism are contested (allowing some to claim the category is redundant as anything other than a broad heuristic). And it is partly because of the concurrence of a widespread adherence to neoliberal ideas and the process of fi nancialization (allowing some to claim that the category has been overtaken in importance in explanatory terms). The response to the pandemic has muddied the waters still further. There are now lots of suggestions that there can be ‘ no going back ’ to the economic world as it was before. But when it is so dif fi cult to specify what the characteristics of that world were, problems obviously arise in describing what lies beyond it. Yet critical scholars remain largely wedded to the notion of neoliberalism in accounts of state transformation. This is not to suggest the literature offers only a simplistic account of the neoliberal state, or the neoliberalization of the state. First, there is recognition","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":"26 1","pages":"215 - 219"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49136019","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Industrial policy and comparative political economy: A literature review and research agenda","authors":"Fabio Bulfone","doi":"10.1177/10245294221076225","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294221076225","url":null,"abstract":"The Great Recession renewed calls for a return of state activism in support of the European economy. The widespread nationalizations of ailing companies and the growing activism of national development banks led many to celebrate the re-appearance of industrial policy. Despite this reappraisal, however, comparative political economy (CPE) contributions to the study of industrial policy are still scarce. This review article critically overviews the existing literature linking CPE and industrial policy meeting three goals. First, to trace the evolution of the goals, protagonists, and policy instruments of industrial policy in the European Union (EU) since the post-war period. Second, to provide a periodization of the evolution of industrial policy based on the distinction between the inward-looking forms of state intervention prevalent until the late 1970s and the open-market industrial policy of later decades. Third, to outline future research pathways based on the integration between CPE, heterodox economics, and economic geography.","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":"27 1","pages":"22 - 43"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2022-03-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44101374","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Boom and bust, Chinese style: Multi-task regulatory dilemma and China’s stock market crisis in 2015","authors":"Chen Li, Huanhuan Zheng","doi":"10.1177/10245294221075530","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294221075530","url":null,"abstract":"China’s stock market experienced a major boom and bust between 2014 and 2015, with profound implications on China’s financial stability and governance reforms. Drawing on the organizational studies literature on hybrids, this article analyses how the hybridization of multiple logics has shaped the regulatory incentives, policy process and market dynamics in the evolution of China’s stock market crisis in 2015. It argues that China’s stock market governance has been trapped by the multi-task regulatory dilemma with logic volatility endogenous to its hybrid regime, which poses fundamental constraints on China’s financial stability and regulatory effectiveness. It concludes by discussing the alternative approaches of managing hybridity with integration and differentiation strategies in China’s post-crisis financial governance reforms.","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":"27 1","pages":"94 - 114"},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44945356","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}