Private equity in the UK context

This article concentrates on private equity (PE) in the UK. It argues that private equity is the latest of a series of ways in which finance and the City of London have dominated the UK economy. In a relatively short period, large PE deals became significant in the UK. They led to organisational restructurings which treated the workforce as expendable costs. The rise of private equity led eventually to political opposition and although this appeared briefly to be very powerful, in the end it achieved little because it was never strong enough to combat the allied forces of the City, the Treasury and the Bank of England. However, private equity has not been triumphant. On the contrary it is fully implicated in the current financial crisis and its structure means that its growth has ceased and its very survival is in question. In some European countries, this may mean that rising financialisation will be halted at least temporarily. However in the UK, where the City is powerfully entrenched, private equity may decline but it is doubtful whether the financial dominance of the UK economy will be fundamentally challenged

Internationalization of professional service firms

This chapter examines the internationalization of Professional Service Firms (PSFs), outlining its drivers, varying forms, and organizational implications. It argues that conventional internationalization theory does not apply straightforwardly to PSFs. The authors identify three key sources of PSF distinctiveness—governance, clients, and knowledge—and show how these generate not only differences between PSFs and other types of organizations but also heterogeneity amongst PSFs themselves. Based on this, four different forms of PSF internationalization are identified—network, project, federal, and transnational—and the authors note that scholarly interest has mostly focused on the last two of these. The chapter highlights change towards the transnational model as an underlying theme in PSF research. It finds little convincing evidence that this model has been successfully implemented and it is argued that, in general, PSFs are better understood as federal structures controlled by a few powerful offices than as transnational enterprises

Transnational actors, transnational institutions, transnational spaces: the role of law firms in the internationalization of competition regulation

The emergence of systems of transnational regulation and governance in the last decade has been a considerable challenge to authors studying patterns of business and management from an institutionalist perspective. One view, expounded most clearly in Whitley, is that “as long as the nation state remains the primary unit of political competition, legitimacy and definer and upholder of private property rights, in addition to being the predominant influence on labor market institutions, many characteristics of business systems will continue to vary significantly across national boundaries” (Whitley 2005a: 224). Inevitably such arguments are countered by contrary claims showing how, in specific areas, forms of transnational governance are emerging, what Djelic and Quack refer to as “the progressive transnationalization of a few actors, strategies and logics” (Djelic and Quack 2003: 11)

Market formation and governance in international financial markets: The case of OTC derivatives

How are markets developed and governed? The article reviews four perspectives on the formation and development of markets and market governance — the political perspective (Fligstein), the network perspective (White), the framing perspective (Callon) and the soft law/expert power perspective (Slaughter). It then utilizes these perspectives in order to understand the development of the market for over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives. It finds that this market was stabilized and governed through the operation of all of these features — power, networks, framing and expert power. The International Swaps and Dealers Association (ISDA) to which all market participants belong has played a central role in this process. It has created a Master Agreement that is the common basis to all OTC derivative contracts across the world and seeks to overcome potentially problematic areas such as netting and collateral. It brings together all market participants and uses their expertise within its committees to develop new rules. However, the article shows that ISDA as a private international association cannot sustain governance by itself. It has to influence national governments in order to ensure that its Master Agreement is enforceable even though the agreement favours ISDA members above other actors. This has the potential for political controversy though mainly governments deal with it as an issue of technical expertise. At the public, international level, the central bankers forum in Basle is also concerned with the oversight of the sector and have issued a number of warnings about potential sources of instability arising from the derivatives market. The article illustrates that the market formation process is highly complex and that the governance of the market is multi-levelled and precarious. The research raises questions about how other complex markets are being created and how their governance structures are determined

The social organization of ideas in employment relations

This article compares how the United States and Germany deregulated labor markets between the 1980s and 2010s in response to the rise of neoliberalism. Building on literature with a focus on ideas and national knowledge regimes, the authors argue that the trajectories of labor market deregulation across the two countries are explained by the distinct social organization of ideas. The latter refers to the actors and institutions involved in the production and dissemination of ideas (including think tanks and public research institutes), their access and ways of communicating to political elites and electorates, levels of shared academic standards across the political divide, and related degrees of competition or cooperation in the production of new knowledge and policy ideas. Moving beyond previous employment relations literature with a focus on institutions and power, the article breaks new theoretical ground by demonstrating how the social organization of ideas is a key intermediary in explaining employment relations change and continuity

Business has been a bystander to Brexit

In 2016, while pro-Brexit voices characterised the vote as a stand-off between ordinary people and the elite, a striking feature of the campaign and its aftermath is the limited role played by one important elite actor, namely business. Why was business a bystander to the Brexit process, ask Magnus Feldmann and Glenn Morgan (University of Bristol)

Chapter 8 The Social Foundations of Precarious Work:

The digital PDF of Chapter 8 of this title is available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. The word ‘precarity’ is widely used when discussing work and employment, social conditions and lived experiences, and social classes. There is not, however, a consensus on the precise meaning of the term or how it should best be used to explore social changes. Bringing together an international group of thinkers from a diverse range of fields, this book offers a distinctive and critical perspective approach to an important topic

Institutional legacies and firm dynamics: the internationalisation of British and German law firms

Institutionalist approaches to the study of the firm which emerged in the last two decades have tended to be dominated by static models of both firms and institutions. As a form of ‘equilibrium’ analysis which holds factors constant in order to allow a deeper understanding of how they are interdependent and complementary, this approach has yielded rich dividends in contributing to our understanding of how firms within different national business systems are structured and the effect which this has on their ability to compete in international markets. More recently, however, debates have moved on to consider firms, not just as passive recipients of institutional resources but as actors involved both in the construction and reconstruction of such resources within national contexts and in the selective learning and adaptation of overseas experiences into their own structures. This reflects a deepening integration of economic activities, organisational structures and markets across borders reinforced by a restructuring of regulatory activities away from the monopolistic dominance of the nation-state and the public arena towards a more diffuse and diverse set of regulatory activities and actors operating across states and across the public-private divide. Attempts to conceptualize these processes at a macro-level have traditionally been dominated by the ‘convergencedivergence’ debate, more recently wrapped up in the discourse of ‘globalization’ as an ineluctable force undermining national differences and increasing shared and common models of firms and markets. Are these changes undermining national distinctiveness or do they reinforce national differences by accentuating processes of specialisation? Often lying behind this has been the associated but distinctive argument about whether ‘convergence’ is merely a value-neutral way of describing a process of ‘Americanization’ – in firm structures, models of management and of markets and in regulatory frameworks

Solidarity at Work:Concepts, levels and challenges

Solidarity is not a unified phenomenon with unchanging qualities; it partakes of moral, political and performative elements that are underpinned and reinforced by a shared work context, an organizational infrastructure and an institutional frame which together create distinctive path dependencies in solidarity across different forms of capitalism. Neo-liberalism has challenged these path dependencies by changing the material conditions and the ideological terrain, by heightening the diversity of the workforce, by restructuring the institutional context. However, this is not the end of solidarity and the article addresses the question of what sort of solidarities are now emerging and how.status: publishe