Showing papers on "Capitalism published in 1998"

Cannibals with Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business

Abstract: Introduction - is capitalism sustainable? seven revolutions for sustainable capitalism revolution 1 - competition - going for the triple win revolution 2 - values - from me to we revolution 3 - information and transparency - no hiding place revolution 4 - lifecylces - from conception to resurrection revolution 5 - partnerships - after the honeymoon revolution 6 - time - three scenarios revolution 7 - corporate governance - stake in the future the sustainability transition - value shifts, value migrations the worlds of money and power the sustainability audit - how are you placed?

State Versus Private Ownership

Abstract: Private ownership should generally be preferred to public ownership when the incentives to innovate and to contain costs must be strong. In essence, this is the case for capitalism over socialism, explaining the dynamic vitality' of free enterprise. The great economists of the 1930s and 1940s failed to see the dangers of socialism in part because they focused on the role of prices under socialism and capitalism and ignored the enormous importance of ownership as the source of capitalist incentives to innovate. Moreover, many of the concerns that private firms fail to address social goals' can be addressed through government contacting and regulation without resort to government ownership. The case for private provision only becomes stronger when competition between suppliers, reputational mechanisms, and the possibility of provision by private not-for-profit firms, as well as political patronage and corruption, are brought into play.

State versus Private Ownership

Abstract: Private ownership should generally be preferred to public ownership when the incentives to innovate and to contain costs must be strong. In essence, this is the case for capitalism over socialism, explaining the 'dynamic vitality' of free enterprise. The great economists of the 1930s and 1940s failed to see the dangers of socialism in part because they focused on the role of prices under socialism and capitalism and ignored the enormous importance of ownership as the source of capitalist incentives to innovate. Moreover, the concern that private firms fail to address 'social goals' can be addressed through government contracting and regulation, without resorting to government ownership. The case for private provision only becomes stronger when competition between suppliers, reputational mechanisms, the possibility of provision by private not-for-profit firms, as well as political patronage and corruption, are brought into play.

False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism

Abstract: Revised to include the events of the late-1990s in Asia, this text argues that the attempt to impose the Anglo-American style free market on the world will create a disaster on the scale of Soviet Communism. John Gray believes it will cause wars, worsen ethnic conflict and impoverish millions.

Postsocialist Pathways: Transforming Politics and Property in East Central Europe

Abstract: Part I. Extrication: 1. Remaking the political field: strategic interactions and contingent choices Part II. Transformations: 2. The privatization debate: from plan to market or from plan to clan? 3. Path dependence and privatization strategies Part III. Deliberative Association: 4. Markets, states, and deliberative associations 5. Restructuring networks in East European capitalism 6. Enabling constraints: institutional sources of policy coherence 7. Extended accountability Bibliography.

Transnational classes and international relations

Abstract: An exciting and original analysis of the development of capitalist classes, such as the Freemasons, that cross national boundaries in the global political economy. This innovative book focuses on: * an historical perspective on class formation under capitalism and its transnational integration * international relations between the English-speaking centre of capital and successive contender states. The author develops a broad-ranging and thorough understanding of class in the process of globalization. He does so within several theoretical frameworks shedding much light on this important topic.

Which capitalism? lessons form the east asian crisis

Abstract: As a result of the Asian crisis, relationship-based economic systems are now under attack for corruption and inefficiency. Yet, until recently, they were held up as an alternative (and in some respects superior) form of capitalism to the arm's-length, market-based, Anglo-Saxon systems of the U.S. and the U.K. What went wrong? This paper suggests that relationship-based systems work well when contracts are poorly enforced and capital is scarce. Power relationships substitute for contracts, and can achieve better outcomes than a primitive contractual system. But a relationship-based system suppresses the price system and the signals it provides. As a result, relationship-based systems are likely to misallocate capital when presented with large external capital inflows. Since the external capital comes from arm's length investors who typically have few contractual rights or little power in a relationship system, and since these investors are aware of the potential for misallocation, they rationally choose to maintain control over borrowers by keeping their claims short term. Thus, the contact between the two systems creates a fragile hybrid that, while mutually beneficial to relationship borrowers and arm's length investors in normal times, is excessively prone to shocks. Where do we go from here? The authors suggest that while there may be some short-term benefits for emerging economies from reverting to the pure relationship-based system, in the long run such economies will be held back unless they develop the greater disclosure, contract enforcement, and competition of the arm's-length system. The current Asian crisis may be the most opportune moment for these economies to effect the transition between systems.

The Crisis Of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered

Abstract: George Soros applies his experience in the world of finance to explain what is happening in the collapsing global economy. The Russian economy has collapsed leading to inflation and economic hardship; scores of Japanese banks are in ruin; the once-booming economies of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia have imploded; and even in Europe and America, the markets lurch violently, wiping out gains each week. Soros dissects the crisis and economic theory, revealing how theoretical assumptions have combined with human behaviour to lead to today's calamities. He shows how unquestioning faith in market forces causes blindness to crucial instabilites, and how those instabilities have chain-reacted to cause the economic crisis which, he argues, still has the potential to get much worse. Soros offers solutions to this global meltdown.

Making capitalism without capitalists : class formation and elite struggles in post-communist Central Europe

Abstract: Focuses on the transition from socialism to capitalism in Eastern Europe since the 1980s, where capitalism was made without a capitalist class. This text reflects on the sociological characteristics of the Communist system and offers a theory of post-Communist societies. 1989 is seen as a successful revolution led by the former technocratic fraction of the old Communist ruling estate against the bureaucracy. In order to secure its victory, however, the technocracy had to make substantial concessions to the former dissident intelligentsia. The irony of the post-Communist way to capitalism is that these most unlikely actors see "building capitalism" as their historic task.

Booty Capitalism: The Politics of Banking in the Philippines

Abstract: in the Philippines Author(s): Nathan Gilbert Quimpo Reviewed work(s): Booty Capitalism: The Politics of Banking in the Philippines by Paul Hutchcroft Capital, Coercion, and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines by John Sidel Elections and Democratization in the Philippines by Jennifer Franco The Communist Party of the Philippines 1968-1993: A Story of Its Theory and Practice by Kathleen Weekley Source: Comparative Politics, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Jan., 2005), pp. 229-250 Published by: Ph.D. Program in Political Science of the City University of New York Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20072884 Accessed: 09/01/2009 04:57

Recombinant property in East European capitalism

Abstract: In contrast to the problematic of transition, this paper sees social change not as the passage from one order to another but as rearrangement in the patterns of how a multiplicity of social orders are interwoven. From that perspective we see organizational innovation not as replacement but as recombination. The fmdings of field research in Hungarian firms. data on ownership of the largest Hungarian enterprises, and interviews with key policy makers in government. banking. and industry indicate the emergence of new property forms that are neither statist nor private, in which the properties of private and public are dissolved. interwoven. and recombined. Recombinant property is a form of organizational hedging, or portfolio management. in which actors are responding to extraordinary uncertainty in the organizational environment. For enterprise actors the question is not simply, "Will I survive the market test?" but also, under what conditions is proof of worth on market principles neither sufficient nor necessary to survive. Recombinant property is an attempt to have resources in more than one organizational form-or similarly-to produce hybrid organizational forms that can be justified or assessed by more than one standard of measure. The clash of competing organizational principles that characterizes post-socialist societies produces new organizational forms; and this organizational diversity can form a basis for greater adaptability. At the same time, however, this multiplicity of ordering principles creates problems of accountability. Accompanying the decentralized reorganization oj assets is a centralization of liabilities. Both processes blur the boundaries between public and private. On the one hand, privatization produces the criss-crossing lines of recombinant property; on the other, debt consolidation transforms private debt into public liabilities. Whereas in the state socialist economy paternalism was based on the state's attempts at the centralized management of assets, in the first years of the post-socialist economy paternalism is based on the state's attempts at the centralized management of liabilities. *Research for this paper was supported by grants from NCSEER (the National council for Soviet and Bast European Research), IRIS (Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector). and the Project on Corporate Governance of the World Bank/Central European University. My thanks to Ronald Breiger, Rogers Brubaker. Uszl6 Bruszt, Cluistopher Clague, Ellen Comisso. Paul DiMaggio, Geoff Fougere, Istva.n Gabor, Peter GedeOl}, Gemot Grabher, Szabolcs Kemeny, Ja.nos Kollo, Jmos KonJ.ai. Janos Lukacs, Laszl6 Neumann, Claus Offe, Eva Pal6cz, Akas Rona-Tas, Monique Djokic Stark. Marton Tardos, and Eva Voszka for their criticisms of an earlier draft. Recombinant Property in East European Capitalism

Education and the Rise of the Global Economy

Abstract: Joel Spring investigates the role of educational policy in the evolving global economy, and the consequences of school systems around the world adapting to meet the needs of international corporations. The new global model for education addresses problems of technological change, the quick exchange of capital, and free markets; policies to resolve these problems include "lifelong learning," "learning societies," international and national accreditation of work skills; international and national standards and tests; school choice; multiculturalism; and economic nationalism. The distinctive contribution Spring makes is to offer an original interpretive framework for examining and understanding the interconnections among education, imperialism and colonialism, and the rise of the global economy. He offers a unique comparison of the educational policies of the World Bank, the United Nations, the European Union, and the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation. Additionally, he provides and weaves together important historical and current information on education in the context of the expansion of international capitalism; much of this information, gathered from many diverse sources, is otherwise not easily available to readers of this book. In the concluding chapters of the volume, Spring presents a thoughtful analysis and a powerful argument emphasizing the importance of human rights education in a global economy. This volume is a sequel to Spring's earlier book, Education and the Rise of the Corporate State (1972), continuing the work he has been engaged in since the 1970s to describe and analyze the relationship between political, economic, and historical forces and educational policy.

More shock than therapy : Market transition, employment, and income in Russia, 1991-1995

Abstract: Sixteen predictions from market transition theory are assessed using survey data on employment, earnings, and income in Russia, during the first five years of market reform. Although the private sector has grown, self‐employment is still rare. Incomes are down, and unemployment is up. A distended income distribution reflects unprecedented income inequality. Distinctive features of late Soviet‐era stratification persist: low returns to education, a gender gap in earnings, and low earnings among professionals. The Russian market transition offers more opportunity in trade, consumer services, and speculation and less in manufacturing than do other emerging makets. This corresponds to “merchat capitalism” and contradicts the predictions of market transition theory. Everything the Communists told us about communism was a lie. Everything they told us about capitalism turns out to be true. (Popular Russian joke, circa 1996)

Globalization, Labour Markets and Welfare States: A Future of ‘Competitive Corporatism’?

Abstract: The relationship between globalization and welfare states has neither been adequately theorized nor empirically investigated. Much of the literature assumes a convergence among European welfare states on a ‘lean welfare model’, given external competitive pressures and unsustainable domestic commitments, while, in the absence of a strong European industrial relations system and social dimension, the collapse of corporatist structures alongside the fragmentation of labour markets is inevitable (for a survey, see Rhodes, 1996). Despite much controversy in the literature over the origins of these changes in national institutional structures, it does seem to be the case that developments in international capitalism are reducing the ability of states to control their economic ‘borders’, in part because, as Cerny argues, the scale of goods and assets produced and exchanged has diverged from the structural scale of the nation-state, making it increasingly more difficult to provide and control particular public goods (Cerny, 1995). At the same time, these developments have altered the balance of power in domestic settings, shifting influence in favour of capital and giving it an effective veto power in certain cases through enhanced exit options via relocation to foreign markets.

The German ideology : including Theses on Feuerbach and introduction to The critique of political economy

Abstract: Nearly two years before his powerful Communist Manifesto, Marx (1818-1883) co-wrote "The German Ideology" in 1845 with friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels expounding a new political worldview, including positions on materialism, labour, production, alienation, the expansion of capitalism, class conflict, revolution, and eventually communism. They chart the course of 'true' socialism based on Hegel's dialectic, while criticising the ideas of Bruno Bauer, Max Stirner and Ludwig Feuerbach. Marx expanded his criticism of the latter in his now famous Theses on Feuerbach, found after Marx's death and published by Engels in 1888. "Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy", also found among the posthumous papers of Marx, is a fragment of an introduction to his main works. Combining these three works, this volume is essential for an understanding of Marxism.

Economics and Utopia: Why the Learning Economy is Not the End of History

Abstract: Since the fall of the Berlin Wall we have been told that no alternative to Western capitalism is possible or desirable. This book challenges this view with two arguments. First, the above premise ignores the enormous variety within capitalism itself. Second, there are enormous forces of transformation within contemporary capitalisms, associated with moves towards a more knowledge-intensive economy. These forces challenge the traditional bases of contract and employment, and could lead to a quite different socio-economic system. Without proposing a static blueprint, this book explores this possible scenario.

Virtualism : a new political economy

Abstract: ion in western economic practice, James G. Carrier the triumph of economics - or, "rationality" can be dangerous to your reasoning, Ben Fine abstraction, reality and the gender of "economic man", Julie Nelson development and structural adjustment, Philip McMichael cash for quotas - disputes over the legitimacy of an economic model of fishing in Iceland, Agnar Helgason and Gisli Palsson the transnational capitalist class, Leslie Sklair virtual capitalism - the globalization of reflexive business knowledge, Nigel Thrift conclusion, Daniel Miller.

Internationalization and varieties of capitalism: the limited effects of cross-national coordination of economic activities on the nature of business systems

Abstract: The increasing internationalization of economic activities in the late twentieth century has encouraged the belief that a new form of cross-national economic organization is becoming established and replacing existing forms of capitalism. Both the intensification of international competition and growth of managerial coordination across borders are seen as generating the convergence of currently separate business systems. However, the extent of such internationalization is less than often claimed, especially when compared to the late nineteenth century, and the processes by which it will lead to such convergence remain obscure. Since the different varieties of capitalist economic organization in Europe, Asia and the Americas developed over some time interdependently with dominant societal institutions, the ways in which they change as a result of internationalization are path dependent and reflect their historical legacies as well as current institutional linkages. Qualitative changes in central business system characteristics, such as ownership relations, non-ownership coordination and employment policies, are therefore unlikely to be rapid or to result solely from internationalization. Furthermore, the ways in which firms from different business systems internationalize reflect their varied natures and strategies which are unlikely to alter greatly unless key institutions alter. If multinational firms do develop different characteristics from national competitors, their impact on their domestic and host business systems will likewise depend on a number of strong conditions. Similarly, the establishment of a distinctive and dominant 'global' business system is only likely in very restrictive circumstances.

Two Lucky People: Memoirs

Abstract: This is an autobiographical account of the lives and influence of economist Milton Friedman and his wife Rose, who sought to change intellectual opinion in the USA by their belief in personal freedom. It covers their involvement with world leaders and important public policy issues. Through their books and television programmes, and Milton's columns in "Newsweek", the Friedmans' views have been influential, widely debated and gradually accepted. When "Capitalism and Freedom" was published in 1962, it was ignored by the national media. By contrast, "Free to Choose", published the year Ronald Reagan was elected, became a bestseller. Together the Friedmans experienced many of the major events that have shaped the history of the modern world - from the Great Depression to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Milton Friedman served as unofficial adviser to Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and Presidents Nixon and Reagan. Apart from providing an account of two productive careers, the book is laced with entertaining details of life on the academic and ideological high wire.

Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism

Abstract: I. THE STORY OF THE CONSUMER, THE LABORER, THE CAPITALIST, AND THE NATION-STATE IN THE SOCIETY OF PERPETUAL GROWTH. 1. Capitalism and the Making of the Consumer. Plan of the Book. Culture and the Construction of the Consumer. The Construction of the Consumer. Marketing and Advertising. The Transformation of Institutions. The Transformation of Spiritual and Intellectual Values. Kinderculture in America: The Child as Consumer. The Role of Children in Capitalism. The Social Construction of Childhood. The Appropriation of Childhood, Part I: Baum's Emerald City. The Appropriation of Childhood, Part II: Walt Disney's World. Conclusion. 2. The Laborer in the Culture of Capitalism. A Primer on the Essential Economic Elements of Capitalism. The Baptism of Money. The Construction and Anatomy of the Working Class. Characteristics of the Working Class. The Growth of Overseas Assembly Plants. The Creation of Free Labor. The Segmentation of the Workforce. Control and Discipline. Resistance and Rebellion. Conclusion. 3. The Rise of the Merchant, Industrialist, and Capital Controller. The Era of the Global Trader. A Trader's Tour of the World in 1400. The Economic Rise of Europe and its Impact on Africa and the Americas. The Rise of the Trading Companies. The Era of the Industrialist. Textiles and the Rise of the Factory System. The Age of Imperialism. The Era of the Corporation, the Multilateral Institution, and the Capital Controller. The Rise of the Corporation. Bretton Woods and the World Debt. The Power of Capital Controllers. Conclusion. 4. The Nation-State in the Culture of Capitalism. The Origin and History of the State. The Evolution of the State. The History and Function of the Nation-State. Constructing the Nation-State. Creating the Other. Language, Bureaucracy, and Education. Violence and Genocide. The Future of the Nation-State. Transnationalism and Migration. Will Corporations Rule the World? Nongovernmental Organizations. Conclusion. II. THE GLOBAL IMPACT OF THE CULTURE OF CAPITALISM. 5. The Problem of Population Growth. The Malthusians versus the Revisionists. The Case of India and China. The Issue of Carrying Capacity. The Ideology of Malthusian Concerns. Demographic Transition Theory. A Primer on the Determinants of Population Growth and Decline. Some Examples of Demographic Change. Population Growth in the Periphery. Wealth Flows Theory. The Social Implications of Wealth Flows Theory. The Question of Gender and Power. Problems and Prospects. Conclusion. 6. Hunger, Poverty, and Economic Development. The Evolution of Food Production: From the Neolithic to the Neocaloric. From Gathering and Hunting to the Neolithic. Capitalism and Agriculture. The Neocaloric and the Green Revolution. The Politics of Hunger. The Anatomy of Famine. The Anatomy of Endemic Hunger. Economic Development and Solutions to Hunger. Economic Development. Foreign Aid: The Case of Russia. Targeting Vulnerable Populations: The Grameen Bank. Conclusion. 7. Environment and Consumption. The Case of Sugar. Sugar Origins and Production. Uses of Sugar. The Development of the Sugar Complex. The Expansion of Sugar Consumption. The Mass Consumption of Sugar. Modern Sugar. The Story of Beef. The Ascendancy of Beef. The Emergence of the American Beef Industry. The Internationalization of the Hamburger. Environmentally Sustainable Cattle Raising. Exporting Pollution. Conclusion. 8. Disease. A Primer on How to Die of an Infectious Disease. The Relationships between Culture and Disease. Gathering and Hunting to Early Agriculture. "Graveyards of Mankind." Diseases of Environmental Change. AIDS and the Culture of Capitalism. How Did the Disease Spread? Who Gets Infected with AIDS? Who Gets Blamed? Conclusion. 9. Indigenous People, Ethnic Groups, and the Nation-State. The Fate of Indigenous Peoples. Some Characteristics of Indigenous Peoples. The Process of Ethnocide. The Guarani: The Economics of Ethnocide. History and Background. Contemporary Development and Guarani Communities. Ethnic Violence and the Question of Political Sovereignty. Genocide in Rwanda. Rights of Self-Determination. Conclusion. III. RESISTANCE AND REBELLION. 10. Peasant Protest, Rebellion, and Resistance. Malaysia and the Weapons of the Weak. Malaysian Peasants and the Green Revolution. Fighting Back. Obstacles to Resistance. Protest and Change. Kikuyu and the Mau Mau Rebellion. The British in East Africa. The White Highlands. The Roots of the Rebellion. The Rebellion. "State of Emergency." The Oath and the Detention Camps. Independence. The Rebellion in Chiapas. Poverty and Inequality in Chiapas. The Rebellion and the Global Economy. The Revolt and the Reaction of the Mexican Government. The Future of Peasants. Conclusion. 11. Antisystemic Protest. Protest as Antisystemic: The Two World Revolutions. The Revolution of 1848. The Revolution of 1968. The Protests of Labor: Coal Miners in Nineteenth-Century Pennsylvania. The Coal Industry and the Worker's Life. Worker Resistance and Protest. Destroying Worker Resistance. Global Feminist Resistance. Gender Relations in the Culture of Capitalism. Strategies of Protest. Ecological Resistance Movements. Earthfirst! Chipko and the Tragedy of the Commons. Conclusion. 12. Religion and Antisystemic Protest. Indigenous Religious Movements as Protest. The Ghost Dance. The Cargo Cults. Zionism in South Africa. The Global Challenge of Antisystemic Religious Protest. Islamic Fundamentalism. Protestant Fundamentalism in North America. The Contest between Liberation Theology and Protestant Fundamentalism in Latin America. The Growth and Development of Liberation Theology. Growing Opposition to Liberation Theology. The Growth of the Evangelical Movement in Latin America: The Case of Guatemala. Conclusion. 13. The Construction of the Citizen/Activist. What Are the Real Dangers? The GNP and the Construction of the Doctrine of Perpetual Growth. The Depletion of Natural Capital. The Depletion of Political Capital. The Depletion of Social Capital. Capital and Public Policy. Constructing the Citizen Activist. Indices and Goals for Global Well-being. Some Concrete Policy Recommendations. Rebuilding and Maintaining Natural Capital. Rebuilding and Maintaining Political Capital. Rebuilding and Maintaining Social Capital. Conclusions: Cosmological and Everyday Choices. References. Index.

Turbo-Capitalism: Winners And Losers In The Global Economy

Abstract: In this critical analysis of today's free-market capitalism, Edward Luttwak shows how it is vastly different from the controlled capitalism that flourished so successfully from 1945 to the 1980s. Turbo-capitalism is private enterprise liberated from government regulation, unchecked by effective trade unions, unfettered by concerns for employees or investment restrictions, and unhindered by taxation. The winners - the architects and acrobats of techno-organizational change - become much richer; the losers, the majority, become relatively or absolutely poorer and are forced by downsizing to take the traditional jobs of the underclass, more and more of whom end up in prison. Led by the United States, closely followed by Britain, turbo-capitalism is spreading fast throughout Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world (only in France and Japan is there any resistance) without the two great forces that check its enormous power in the United States: a powerful legal system and the stringent rules of American calvinism. Acknowledging the great efficiency of turbo-capitalism, Luttwak provides no solutions but describes in powerful detail the major societal upheavals and inequities it causes and the broad dissatisfaction and anxiety that may result.

The Gospel of Wealth

Abstract: In former days there was little difference between the dwelling, dress, food, and environment of the chief and those of his retainers. The Indians are today where civilized man then was. When visiting the Sioux, I was led to the wigwam of the chief. It was just like the others in external appearance, and even within the difference was trifling between it and those of the poorest of his braves. The contrast between the palace of the millionaire and the cottage of the laborer with us today measures the change which has come with civilization.

The Body as an Accumulation Strategy

Abstract: The body has become a major focus of attention—both theoretically and politically—over the past twenty years. In much of this literature it is presumed that the body is some kind of social construct at the same time as it is a locus and a measure of both the material and the social world we inhabit. The author situates this idea against the background of Marx's representations—too often by-passed in recent literature—in order to show how Marx's concept of variable capital contains a theory of body formation under capitalism at the same time as it lays the groundwork for understanding how political persons act as moral agents to try to change the conditions under which laboring occurs. The struggle for a living wage in Baltimore is then used as a concrete example of how this form of body politics operates under contemporary conditions, illustrating how the body that is to be the measure of all things is itself a site of political-economic contestation over the very forces that create it.

Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism

Abstract: George Soros's The Crisis of Global Capitalism became an international bestseller and an instant classic; a must read for anyone concerned with the complex market forces that rule our global economy and create both prosperity and instability. Now, in Open Society, Soros takes a new and provocative look at the arguments he made in that book, incorporating the latest global economic and political developments into his analysis. He shows how our economic and political arrangements are out of sync. Recognizing that our existing institutions are under the sway of sovereign states, he proposes an "open society alliance" with the dual purpose of fostering open societies in individual countries and laying the groundwork for a global open society. In leading up to his inspiring vision, Soros presents an iconoclastic view of the world that has guided him both in making money and spending it on his network of Open Society Foundations. This book sums up the life's work of an exceptional individual. George Soros is the best fund manager in history, a stateless statesman, and an original thinker.

Another discipline for the market economy: marketing as a performative knowledge and know‐how for capitalism

Abstract: How does the market economy work? On the one hand, orthodox economists have long argued that market equilibrium depends on the automatic adjustment of supply and demand; on the other hand, heterodox economists (Williamson, 1985; Arthur, 1989), but also historians (Chandler, 1977; Tedlow, 1990) and sociologists (Prus, 1989) have tried to show that supply and demand are socially constructed (Granovetter and Swedberg, 1992), that managerial practice shapes the contours of the market. Our objective in revisiting this debate is not so much to radicalize the classical opposition between the two camps but, paradoxically, to outline their common ground. Firstly, the arguments of both groups are always rooted in an examination of supply and demand and of their 'natural' or contingent aspect; secondly, their propositions always entail a separation of science (economics) from practice (management) in order to investigate the complex correspondences between the one and the other. Discussing the foundations of this endless dispute seems to be a good way to resolve it. In order to understand the market economy, one can look somewhere else, and ask other questions: does the functioning of markets rely on instances other than supply and demand? does the functioning of markets rest on processes other than those of science (economics) and/or practice (management)? In asking those questions, one discovers that, between economics and

Globalization and nationalism in a multinational accounting firm: The case of opening new markets in Eastern Europe

Abstract: As major multinationals involved in global expansion, the Big Six are investing in new markets throughout those parts of the world where they believe they can make money. This paper presents a detailed case of how one of the Big Six invested in the former Soviet Union, as it moved towards capitalism. The case presents issues of national pride, national stereotyping, constructing managerial identities and political decision processes in a story of an emergent global strategy. Thus, the paper applies and develops theories of identity and nationalism in explaining the detailed mechanisms of imperialism. The continuing internal debate about the objectives and motives of these firms, whether their focus is on multinational clients or on developing local firms, institutions and markets, has important implications for national public policies in relation to these firms. These issues are crucial in the emerging economies of Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe, where the spread of global capitalism is still open for debate.