Changes in corporate governance of German corporations: convergence to the Anglo-American model?

This paper examines the many changes which have transformed the German system of corporate governance during the last seven odd years. It concludes that it is in the process of converging towards the Anglo-American system and that this has fundamentally affected the way strategic decisions are made in firms. Large, internationally oriented companies are particularly affected. But the notion of shareholder value and its many behavioural effects are gradually spreading also to other parts of the economy. Consequently, the distinctive logic, which had underpinned the German variety of capitalism during most of the post-war period, is eroding. This transformation is affecting also labour and industrial relations in negative ways. The argument is empirically substantiated with data about recent trends in capital markets, banks and firms. The paper theoretically examines institutional change, focussing on the notions of system logic and institutional complementarity. It examines both external sources of change and internal powerful actors who promote the process of transformation. The notion of hybridisation of the German business system is examined but is rejected in favour of a trend towards convergence. Convergence is not seen as a functional necessity, nor is it viewed as inevitable.Corporate governance, capital markets, German variety of capitalism, institutional change.

Modeling High-Temperature Superconductivity: Correspondence at Bay?

How does a predecessor theory relate to its successor? According to Heinz Post's General Correspondence Principle, the successor theory has to account for the empirical success of its predecessor. After a critical discussion of this principle, I outline and discuss various kinds of correspondence relations that hold between successive scientific theories. I then look in some detail at a case study from contemporary physics: the various proposals for a theory of high-temperature superconductivity. The aim of this case study is to understand better the prospects and the place of a methodological principle such as the Generalized Correspondence Principle. Generalizing from the case study, I will then argue that some such principle has to be considered, at best, as one tool that might guide scientists in their theorizing. Finally I present a tentative account of why principles such as the Generalized Correspondence Principle work so often and why there is so much continuity in scientific theorizing.Articl

Dimensional Crossover of Weak Localization in a Magnetic Field

We study the dimensional crossover of weak localization in strongly anisotropic systems. This crossover from three-dimensional behavior to an effective lower dimensional system is triggered by increasing temperature if the phase coherence length gets shorter than the lattice spacing $a$. A similar effect occurs in a magnetic field if the magnetic length $L_m$ becomes shorter than $a(D_{||}/D_\perp)^\gamma$, where \D_{||}/D_\perp is the ratio of the diffusion coefficients parallel and perpendicular to the planes or chains. $\gamma$ depends on the direction of the magnetic field, e.g. $\gamma=1/4$ or 1/2 for a magnetic field parallel or perpendicular to the planes in a quasi two-dimensional system. We show that even in the limit of large magnetic field, weak localization is not fully suppressed in a lattice system. Experimental implications are discussed in detail.Comment: RevTeX, 11 pages, 4 figures; three references added and discusse