Since the early 2000s, scholars from a variety of disciplines have used the concept of financialization to describe a host of structural changes in the advanced political economies. Studies of financialization interrogate how an increasingly autonomous realm of global finance has altered the underlying logics of the industrial economy and the inner workings of democratic society. This paper evaluates the insights of more than a decade of scholarship on financialization. Three approaches will be discussed: the emergence of a new regime of accumulation, the ascendency of the shareholder value orientation and the financialization of everyday life. It is argued that a deeper understanding of financialization will lead to a better understanding of organized interests, the politics of the welfare state, and processes of institutional change.

Making sense of financialization

*Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become a pervasive topic in the business literature, but has largely neglected the role of institutions. This introductory article to the Special Issue of Socio-Economic Review examines the potential contributions of institutional theory to understanding CSR as a mode of governance. This perspective suggests going beyond grounding CSR in the voluntary behaviour of companies, and understanding the larger historical and political determinants of whether and in what forms corporations take on social responsibilities. Historically, the prevailing notion of CSR emerged through the defeat of more institutionalized forms of social solidarity in liberal market economies. Meanwhile, CSR is more tightly linked to formal institutions of stakeholder participation or state intervention in other advanced economies. The tensions between business-driven and multi-stakeholder forms of CSR extend to the transnational level, where the form and meaning of CSR remain highly contested. CSR research and practice thus rest on a basic paradox between a liberal notion of voluntary engagement and a contrary implication of socially binding responsibilities. Institutional theory seems to be a promising avenue to explore how the boundaries between business and society are constructed in different ways, and improve our understanding of the effectiveness of CSR within the wider institutional field of economic governance.

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Corporate Social Responsibility and institutional theory: new perspectives on private governance

Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing

Organized Uncertainty: Designing a World of Risk Management, by Michael Power, is reviewed.

Organized uncertainty: designing a world of risk management

There is a small but growing literature on the financialization of housing that demonstrates how housing is a central aspect of financialization. Despite the varied analyses of the financialization of housing and the importance of housing to financialization, the relations between housing and financialization remain under-researched and under-theorized. The financialization of housing is not really a specific form of financialization, transcending as it does a number of different forms of financialization. Housing systems, in particular, vary widely across the globe, which implies that housing financialization will be inherently variegated, path-dependent and uneven. In this introduction to the symposium, I will discuss how the articles to follow contribute to the literature on the financialization of housing. Housing has entered a post-Fordist, neoliberal and financialized regime. Increasingly, both mortgaged homeownership and subsidized rental housing are there to keep financial markets going, rather than being facilitated by those markets. There is little evidence that the global financial crisis has resulted in any de-financialization of housing. There are common trajectories within uneven and variegated financialization, rather than radically different and completely unrelated forms of housing financialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Variegated Financialization of Housing

*From the beginning of the 1990s up until 2007, leading retailers experienced a slowdown of their growth in domestic markets and yet generated an opposite upward trend in return on equity (ROE). This apparent paradox is examined through an analysis of the 10 main retailers’ accounts. Focusing on the links between financialization and globalization processes, this article examines a variety of complementary ways of making profits implemented within the industry to satisfy impatient shareholders: foreign expansion, financialization of assets, deterioration of suppliers’ and workers’ positions and the use of working capital management to transform market power into financial gains.

Financialization, globalization and the making of profits by leading retailers

From the beginning of the 1990s up until 2007, leading retailers experienced a slowdown of their growth in domestic markets and yet generated an opposite upward trend in return on equity (ROE). This apparent paradox is examined through an analysis of the 10 main retailers' accounts. Focusing on the links between financialization and globalization processes, this article examines a variety of complementary ways of making profits implemented within the industry to satisfy impatient shareholders: foreign expansion, financialization of assets, deterioration of suppliers' and workers' positions and the use of working capital management to transform market power into financial gains.

Understanding the disciplinary aspects of neoliberal regulations: The case of credit-risk regulation under the Basel Accords

L’etude de la mise en œuvre, dans une petite banque mutualiste, des Accords de « Bâle II » permet de documenter certains processus de financiarisation des entreprises. Ces derniers ne passent pas necessairement par l’entree dans le capital des entreprises d’investisseurs institutionnels orientes vers la creation de valeur pour l’actionnaire. Dans le cas etudie, ce sont les choix reglementaires faits tant par l’Union europeenne que par le superviseur bancaire francais qui ont conduit cette banque a transformer totalement son organisation et ses methodes de travail, adoptant ainsi des pratiques informees par la theorie financiere dominante. Ces transformations se repercutent ensuite sur sa clientele de petites et moyennes entreprises, qui se trouvent soumises, par l’intermediaire des nouvelles procedures d’attribution de credit, a une nouvelle discipline financiere.

Céline Baud

Papers

Financialization, globalization and the making of profits by leading retailers

Financialization, globalization and the making of profits by leading retailers

Understanding the disciplinary aspects of neoliberal regulations: The case of credit-risk regulation under the Basel Accords

Comment les firmes se financiarisent : le rôle de la réglementation et des instruments de gestion.

Comment les firmes se financiarisent : le rôle de la réglementation et des instruments de gestion. : Le cas du crédit bancaire