18 research outputs found
A Historical Perspective on the Evolution of Finance, Knowledge, and Labor Market Institutions in Europe
Both policymakers and academics offer various strategies concerning institutions on how to stimulate entrepreneurial activity in Europe. However, historical evidence shows that the cross-national differences in these institutions are the result of long-term historical processes. A successful entrepreneurial strategy would therefore benefit from looking at the past to build and improve current institutions in the future. To provide such a historical insight, this chapter aims to answer the question: How and to what extent have the institutional factors relevant to entrepreneurial activity evolved over time? It discusses the changes in the financial, knowledge, and labor institutions over the twentieth century across European countries to be able to distinguish between institutions that are dynamic and those that are slowly changing. Using the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) framework, it provides insight into the different patterns of institutional change and the implications of this change for the different forms of entrepreneurial activity across European countries. The historical approach presented in this chapter thus contributes to the development o
The Strategic Cognition View of Issue Salience and the Evolution of a Political Issue : Landis & Gyr, the Hungarian Uprising and East-West Trade, 1953–1967
Why do firms facing similar stakeholder issues respond quite differently? The recently
introduced strategic cognition view of issue salience and firm responsiveness (hereinafter:
issue salience model) seeks to tackle this core question of stakeholder theory. I extend the
nascent theorizing with a historical case study in order to rethink the model’s firm-centric
perspective. The firm under examination in this historical case study is the Swiss
multinational Landis & Gyr (LG) during the Cold War period. Like many other Swiss exportoriented
companies in the 1950s and early 1960s, LG was challenged by Swiss pressure
groups, which were highly effective at putting an issue on the public agenda: the call to break
off trade relations with the communist East. The empirically grounded explanation of issue
interpretation and response mechanisms derived from this case study offers two key
theoretical implications: First, it shifts our focus outwards, toward the social and political
context, in which issues evolve and play out over time. This elaboration seeks to understand
the role of the social and political surroundings in constituting firm-specific issue
interpretation processes and response outcomes. Second, the findings suggest that the issue
salience model emphasizes an overly homogenizing conception of the firm. By pointing
towards the tensions and ambiguities in a firm’s collective sensemaking efforts, I start a
critique of the theory in order to push this important stream of research further.peerReviewe