Given the rising interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) globally, its local expressions are as varied as they are increasingly visible in both developed and developing countries. This paper presents a multilevel review of the literature on CSR in developing countries and highlights the key differentiators and nuanced CSR-related considerations that qualify it as a distinctive field of study. This review entails a content analysis of 452 articles spanning two-and-a-half decades (1990–2015). Based on this comprehensive review, the authors identify the key differentiating attributes of the literature on CSR in developing countries in relation to depictions of how CSR is conceived or ‘CSR Thinking’ and depictions of how CSR is practiced and implemented or ‘CSR Doing’. The authors synthesize from there five key themes that capture the main aspects of variation in this literature, namely: (1) complex institutional antecedents within the national business system (NBS); (2) complex macro-level antecedents outside the NBS; (3) the salience of multiple actors involved in formal and informal governance; (4) hybridized and other nuanced forms of CSR expressions; and (5) varied scope of developmental and detrimental CSR consequences. The paper concludes by accentuating how the nuanced forms of CSR in the developing world are invariably contextualized and locally shaped by multi-level factors and actors embedded within wider formal and informal governance systems.

Corporate Social Responsibility in Developing Countries as an Emerging Field of Study

The extensive scholarship on ‘varieties of capitalism’ offers some conceptual and theoretical innovations that can be fruitfully employed to analyse the distinctive institutional foundations of capitalism in Latin America, or what could be called hierarchical market economies (HMEs). This perspective helps identify four core features of HMEs in Latin America that structure business access to essential inputs of capital, technology and labour: diversified business groups, multinational corporations (MNCs), low-skilled labour, and atomistic labour relations. Overall non-market, hierarchical relations in business groups and MNCs are central in organising capital and technology in Latin America, and are also pervasive in labour market regulation, union representation and employment relations. Important complementarities exist among these features, especially between MNCs and diversified business groups, as well as mutually reinforcing tendencies between these dominant corporate forms and general under-investment in skills and in well-mediated employment relations. These four features of HMEs, their common reliance on hierarchy, and the particular interactions among them add up to a distinct variety of capitalism, different from those identified in developed countries and other developing regions.

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Hierarchical Market Economies and Varieties of Capitalism in Latin America

There is little doubt that China's international reemergence represents one of the most significant events in modern history. As China's political economy gains in importance, its interactions with other major political economies will shape global values, institutions, and policies, thereby restructuring the international political economy. Drawing on theories and concepts in comparative capitalism, the author envisages China's reemergence as generating Sino-capitalism—a capitalist system that is already global in reach but one that differs from Anglo-American capitalism in important respects. Sino-capitalism relies more on informal business networks than legal codes and transparent rules. It also assigns the Chinese state a leading role in fostering and guiding capitalist accumulation. Sino-capitalism, ultimately, espouses less trust in free markets and more trust in unitary state rule and social norms of reciprocity, stability, and hierarchy. After conceptualizing Sino-capitalism's domestic political economy, the author uses the case of China's efforts to internationalize its currency, the yuan or renminbi, to systematically illustrate the multifarious manner in which the domestic logic of Sino-capitalism is expressed at the global level. Rather than presenting a deterministic argument concerning the future international role of China, he argues that China's stance and strategy in the international political economy hew quite closely to Sino-capitalism's hybrid compensatory institutional arrangements on the domestic level: state guidance; flexible and entrepreneurial networks; and global integration. Sino-capitalism therefore represents an emerging system of global capitalism centered on China that is producing a dynamic mix of mutual dependence, symbiosis, competition, and friction with the still dominant Anglo-American model of capitalism.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0043887112000202

Sino-Capitalism: China's Reemergence and the International Political Economy

Varieties of institutional systems: A contextual taxonomy of understudied countries

This book argues that Latin America has a distinctive, enduring form of hierarchical capitalism characterized by multinational corporations, diversified business groups, low skills and segmented labor markets. Over time, institutional complementarities knit features of corporate governance and labor markets together and thus contribute to institutional resiliency. Political systems generally favored elites and insiders who further reinforced existing institutions and complementarities. Hierarchical capitalism has not promoted rising productivity, good jobs or equitable development, and the efficacy of development strategies to promote these outcomes depends on tackling negative institutional complementarities. This book is intended to open a new debate on the nature of capitalism in Latin America and link that discussion to related research on comparative capitalism in other parts of the world.

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Hierarchical Capitalism in Latin America: Business, Labor, and the Challenges of Equitable Development

This article enlarges the existing literature on the varieties of capitalism by identifying a third basic variety that does not resemble the liberal market economy or coordinated market economy types. The dependent market economy (DME ) type, as it is named by the authors, is characterized by the importance of foreign capital for the socioeconomic setup and is located in postsocialist Central Europe. Since the collapse of state socialism in the late 1980s, the Czech republic, Hungary, poland, and the slovak republic have introduced a rather successful model of capitalism when compared with other postsocialist states. This article identifies the key elements of the DME model and discusses their interplay. DME s have comparative advantages in the assembly and production of relatively complex and durable consumer goods. These comparative advantages are based on institutional complementarities between skilled, but cheap, labor; the transfer of technological innovations within transnational enterprises; and the provision of capital via foreign direct investment.

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Enlarging the Varieties of Capitalism: The Emergence of Dependent Market Economies in East Central Europe

The European Union (EU) has a crucial influence on the institutional development of corporate governance structures in Central Eastern Europe (CEE). As most political forces in the region favoured quick entry to the EU, one outcome has been an asymmetrical power balance between European regulators and national socio-economic configurations. We identify the EU's objectives and strategy with regard to the restructuring of corporate governance as crucial to understanding the role the EU is playing within the transformation of governance structures in CEE. Using the case of the banking and financial sector in the Czech Republic we analyse the changing regulatory framework of corporate governance. Central to our analysis is the role of the European Commission, which as a transnational actor, has played a major role in promoting and advocating regulatory policies conducive to further embedding socio-economic structures in CEE into the transnational political economy of neoliberal capitalist restructuring.

The Role of the EU in the (Trans)formation of Corporate Governance Regulation in Central Eastern Europe – The Case of the Czech Republic

The current literature on corporate governance in Eastern Central Europe is dominated by economic and juridical accounts. It widely neglects the role of politics in the establishment of a new corporate governance system in this region. This paper argues that this is a failure because, in contrast to popular beliefs, politics is indeed essential for explaining the developments in this field. By identifying the lacunas of current corporate governance research, this paper provides a first exploration of how studies of political actors and institutions could enrich the existing literature. I would like to thank Laura Horn, Catherine Netjes, Andreas Nolke, Henk Overbeek, James Perry, Eline van Straalen, Barbara Vis and the members the peer-teaching group of our department for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. I also wish to thank the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for funding the PhD-project of which this paper is a first result.

Corporate Governance in Eastern Central Europe: The State of the Art

This article explores regulatory developments with regard to employee representation in post-socialist corporate governance systems of Central Europe. It sets out to weigh the applicability of different theories on postsocialist industrial relations that focus on domestic, European and international forces. It pays special attention to the Hungarian case and studies regulatory developments in the early 2000s, with a focus on the third postsocialist Company Law of 2006. The article argues that the law reform undermines effective employee representation in postsocialist corporate governance systems. It concludes that these developments can only be adequately understood as the result of the interplay between various social forces at the national, European and international level. Dieser Beitrag erforscht die regulativen Entwicklungen hinsichtlich der Arbeitnehmervertretung im Kontext postsozialistischer Corporate-GovernanceSysteme in Mitteleuropa. Er beginnt mit der Uberprufung der Anwendbarkeit von verschiedenen Theorien, mit Fokus auf inlandische, europaische und internationale Krafte, auf die postsozialistischen industriellen Beziehungen. Es wird speziell der ungarischen Fall untersucht, wobei die regulativen Entwicklungen zu Beginn dieses Jahrzehnts, und besonders das dritte postsozialistische Unternehmensrecht von 2006 im Zentrum der Betrachtung stehen. Es wird argumentiert, dass die Gesetzesreform eine wirksame Arbeitnehmervertretung in postsozialistischen Corporate-GovernanceSystemen unterminiert. Zusammenfassend kann festegestellt werden, dass diese Entwicklungen nur als das Ergebnis des Zusammenspiels zwischen verschiedenen sozialen Kraften auf der nationalen, europaischen und internationalen Ebenen adaquat verstanden werden konnen.

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Who is undermining employee involvement in postsocialist supervisory boards? - National, European and international forces in the revision of Hungarian company law*

Arjan Vliegenthart

Papers

Enlarging the Varieties of Capitalism: The Emergence of Dependent Market Economies in East Central Europe

The Role of the EU in the (Trans)formation of Corporate Governance Regulation in Central Eastern Europe – The Case of the Czech Republic

Corporate Governance in Eastern Central Europe: The State of the Art

Who is undermining employee involvement in postsocialist supervisory boards? - National, European and international forces in the revision of Hungarian company law*