Suchergebnisse

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent to which institutional convergence has taken place in the new European Union (EU) member states. It does so by contrasting arguments that are inspired by transaction-cost economics within the mainstream international-business literature and contentions within the comparative-capitalisms perspective. A corollary of arguments within the former is that those countries that have less transparent ways of doing business will post poorer economic growth records than those with more predictable and less costly regulations. By contrast, contentions within the comparative-capitalisms literature lead to expectations that a broader set of institutional factors will shape economic growth. Design/methodology/approach: The article adopts a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis approach to examine the necessary and sufficient causal conditions for economic growth in the region. Findings: There is a great deal of institutional diversity within the new EU member states in Central and Eastern Europe. There are no clusters of countries around a specific variety of capitalism or an economic model that has above-average economic growth rates and that is characterized by institutions that lower the costs of market transacting. This, in turn, suggests that convergence pressures are not as great as the mainstream international-business literature has argued. Research limitations/implications: Future research could complement this study by adopting a cross-country, comparative micro- or firm-level approach to examine the ways in which different institutional factors, both individually and collectively, shape the growth of businesses and consequently, economies. Originality/value: Mainstream international business tends to focus on regulation and market-supporting institutions to explain growth in developing economies. This research has shown that a broader view of institutions needs to be adopted, as some countries have been able to post strong economic growth figures despite institutional environments that do not lower the costs of market-based contracting. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Purpose: This paper aims to assess the extent to which convergence in institutional regimes is likely to occur, by examining all ten new EU member states in Central and Eastern Europe in terms of their development of comparative advantages in high-tech export markets either by drawing on foreign investors in the form of multinational companies or by making use of domestic institutional resources. Design/methodology/approach: The article uses fuzzy sets and qualitative comparative analysis to examine both necessary and sufficient causes of success in high-tech export markets. By doing so, it can address the important issue of institutional complementarity. Findings: While it finds that countries that have stronger records in such markets share common features, there are also important differences between them - not least in the areas of employee relations. This, together with other evidence presented in the paper, suggests that convergence around a specific institutional model is unlikely to happen. Originality/value: Analysing, unlike many previous studies, all ten new EU member states in Central and Eastern Europe enables conclusions to be drawn that apply to the whole region. The novel method used in this article means that the extent of any complementarity between different institutions can be addressed, and ensures that issues relating to convergence/divergence are explored. The article, therefore, contributes to a number of important debates on the convergence among types of capitalism, the dependency of the new EU member states on foreign investors, and the institutional foundations for success in high-tech export markets. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

This article seeks, firstly, to shed light on the main claim of the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) framework that socio-economic institutions can help to shape comparative advantage, and, secondly, to complement existing assessments that have relied predominantly on qualitative data and that have tended to focus on a few economic sectors. It examines the distribution of export success in a number of economic sectors, in which competitiveness is said to be characterised by either radical or incremental innovation, as well as exports in knowledge-intensive service sectors. Unlike previous studies it applies the framework to some of the new member states of the European Union in Central and Eastern Europe. This is an important area to examine the contentions of the VoC framework, because, if those arguments are correct, they should be applicable to the new member states. Moreover, it draws on the latest available data; for indicators measuring export success this is done at the lowest level of aggregation. In contrast to previous studies, a more appropriate measure of trade specialisation, revealed symmetric comparative advantage, is used. Whilst some of the evidence supports the VoC framework, much of it does not. This raises important conceptual and methodological issues that should be addressed by future research.

Radical innovation is increasingly becoming the focus of attention of both policy makers and senior corporate managers. However, debates within the varieties of capitalism literature on the ease with which radical innovation can be achieved within less de-regulated economies, such as Germany, have tended to focus on the pharmaceutical industry. This article demonstrates that attempts to assess the extent to which the socio-economic institutions typically associated with Germany support radical innovation should be broadened to cover other sectors besides the pharmaceutical industry, as the distinctiveness of that sector has yet to be firmly established. This article proposes theoretical reasons to suggest that the pharmaceutical industry may not be as distinct, in terms of radical innovation, from other sectors as it is often implicitly assumed to be. These arguments are assessed using the large-scale, representative survey data. This paper opens up new areas that can be explored in future research. The core finding is that pharmaceutical firms are not statistically more likely to introduce radical innovations compared to those in many other high-technology and medium-high-technology industries. In addition, works councils and sectoral collective agreements do not hinder the development of new technologies. Both of these findings have important public-policy implications. Copyright © 2011 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Abstract
The discussion on 'The comparative institutional analysis of energy transitions' gives us a state-of-the-art overview of the main theoretical and conceptual developments within the field of political economy. It invites us to broaden our knowledge on the changing realities of different geographical regions in energy transition. In this discussion forum, Finnegan discusses emerging themes in the comparative political economy literature of climate change. He identifies gaps and offers an outline for further research. Allen, Allen, Cumming and Johan take a closer look at the links between different types of capitalism and the natural environment. The authors stress the importance of adopting an institutional perspective to explain differences in environmental outcomes. Wood compares the transitions of energy usage and mixes between liberal and coordinated market economies from a historical perspective. He looks for parallels between the energy transition from coal to oil and gas to the current renewables. Nicklich and Endo answer the question 'Do globalization and globally perceived occurrences of environmental problems lead to a convergence of energy supply?'. They compare the fields of German and Japanese wind power with a particular focus on Greenpeace after the Fukushima disaster in 2011. Finally, Lim and Tanaka focus on the question 'When do energy transition policies enjoy broad-based acceptance?'. They conclude that the public acceptance of energy transition varies between Western and non-Western societies.