A Corporate Governance Approach

This article examines why Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in 2001 turned down a proposal for an EU take-over directive? The first explanation focuses on party ideology. However, MEPs overwhelmingly voted according to national rather than party lines. Two additional explanations emphasise national characteristics: labour market legislation (national schemes to protect employees against dismissals) and corporate governance issues. Labour market legislation can explain the UK and German MEP votes but not the Swedish and French MEPs votes. These votes can be explained by emphasising measures against take-overs such as a high level of market capitalisation and unequal voting rights

Labor Migration in the European Union: De-institutionalization or Re-institutionalization of Social Protection?

The literature on European Union (EU) integration sees increasing liberalization as a major challenge for models of national capitalism within Member States. EU liberalization, it is argued, erodes national welfare regimes and prevents the re-embedding of markets in social protection systems. However, other scholars highlight the ability of national institutions to reinvent themselves to offer social protection. This paper assesses these claims by exploring an extreme case of labor market pressure driven by EU liberalization. Employment conditions in the meat production sector in Germany and Denmark have been affected in very different ways by EU liberalization. We explore whether, and to what extent, low wage labor migration has weakened the position of social partners and the rules that shape the employment conditions in the industry. We see evidence of deinstitutionalization in both Germany and Denmark but we also see evidence of distinct institutional reinvention that reflects national political traditions. We find that some degree of solidaristic labor market regulation can be maintained – at least in the short term – even in the face of relocation and job losses

Government Policies on Corporate Social Responsibility in Denmark and the UK

Do government policies on CSR in the UK and Denmark reflect distinct domestic political-economic institutional differences as predicted by the Varieties of Capitalism approach, or do they display new forms of governance that primarily address the needs of global businesses? We move beyond the management literature and the literature on public management of particular environmental and sustainability programs to explore a broader government agenda for CSR through a political science lens. We develop a set of expectations that follow from the literature on domestic institutions as well as from the literature that takes into account the role of governments in interaction with transnational actors. We find evidence for a substitution objective in the initial CSR programs of the Danish and British governments (and a mirror objective in Denmark). However, we also find that globalization has motivated governments to use their regulatory authorities pertaining to CSR policies for purposes beyond enhancement of welfare state functions

When is there a sustainability case for CSR? Pathways to environmental and social performance improvements

Little is known about when corporate social responsibility (CSR) leads to a sustainability case (i.e., to improvements in environmental and social performance). Building on various forms of decoupling, we develop a theoretical framework for examining pathways from institutional pressures through CSR management to sustainability performance. To empirically identify such pathways, we apply fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to an extensive dataset from 19 large companies. We discover that different pathways are associated with environmental and social performance (non)improvements, and that pathways to success and failure are for the most part not symmetrical. We identify two pathways to improved environmental performance: an exogenous and an endogenous one. We find two pathways to improved social performance that both involve integrating social responsibility into the core business. Pathways to nonimprovements are multiple, suggesting that failure can occur in a number of ways, while there are only a few pathways to sustainability performance improvements

"Breaking with tradition: Service trade liberalization in the EU and Germany"

This chapter asks why and how services that are not previously thought of as tradable have increasingly been opened up to international competition in EU member states including even in Germany. The chapter contrasts an explanation that focuses on the impact of economic interests with an explanation that focuses on the impact of EU membership. The chapter argues that lobbying by producers or users of services cannot fully explain reform nor does EU membership simply constrain reluctant member state governments to adopt new legislation. Instead the chapter argues that in important service sectors the German government has promoted trade reform even sometimes in the face of strong opposition from providers, consumers, and unions. The chapter maintains that a crucial key to liberalization is the emergence of a break in government opposition. In particular, the ability of the government to re-interpret services as regular tradable products combined with new regulation to "shelter" exposed groups such as consumers and workers against potential harm. Implications of this claim for future service sector liberalization are subsequently discussed