Suchergebnisse

AbstractMuch of contemporary comparative political–economic thinking about global industrial production accepts the following claims (a) that manufacturing is destined to leave rich political economies for lower wage ones; (b) that global industrial production is hierarchically structured with higher value operations concentrated in the rich countries and intermediate component production distributed across increasingly specialized clusters in emerging political economies; (c) that digital technological advance, automation and massive platform firms are ushering in a new historical regime of capitalism that is generating high rates of inequality and threatens to thoroughly degrade work for less educated and less skilled workers all over the globe. This article argues that these three arguments are deeply flawed because they present only a partial picture of contemporary global industrial dynamics. They exclude from view many concurrent developments that suggest that alternative political and economic practices and trajectories are possible. And they downplay the role that politics and struggle have played and can play in the constitution of the political economy. By deconstructing these three arguments, this article attempts to recover possibility from the constraints of false necessity in thinking about global industrial production dynamics.

Globalization is transforming the German manufacturing production model. German manufacturing MNCs are shifting from servicing global demand via exports to a strategy of 'produce where you sell' FDI expansion in emerging global markets. This strategy is generating recursive dynamics that are transforming the demographic and role composition of German home country production locations. This, in turn, poses challenges for the German systems of industrial relations and for industrial policy that are only beginning to be addressed. Overall, the article's take home conceptual message is that contemporary manufacturing globalization processes are recursive: i.e.: actions taken outside of Germany, on all levels, have consequences for -- and involve change in -- organizations and practices within Germany.

A review essay covering a book by Peer Hull Kristensen and Kari Lilja (Eds.), Nordic Capitalisms and Globalization: New Forms of Economic Organization and Welfare Institutions (2011).

"A reified opposition between social cooperation (stakeholderism) and Neoliberal
market solutions paralyzes political and scientific debate on reform in Germany today. This
essay rejects that opposition by recasting the way in which each of the categories is understood.
Pressure to become more flexible in many areas of work and organizational life has not
given rise to a blanket embrace of "the market" on a local level. Instead, it has induced widespread
experimentation with alternative forms of workplace and firm governance that involve
continual and collaborative recomposition of stakeholder roles in and among firms and social
actors. In other words, stakeholder governance is not disintegrating or giving way to the market
in Germany. It is being redefined. Experimentation with roles and rules by creative actors
drives the alternative analysis. The argument is developed empirically by a discussion of current
local trends in the system of industrial relations." (author's abstract)

A review symposium on a book by Arndt Sorge, The Global and the Local: Understanding the Dialectics of Business Systems (Oxford: Oxford U Press, 2005). Adapted from the source document.