In the early 1990s the Nordic countries were considered to be in a serious situation. The costs of welfare states, generous unemployment benefits, high taxation rates, strong unions, and centralized wage bargaining were thought to be undermining their competitiveness in an age of rapid...

In the early 1990s the Nordic countries were considered to be in a serious situation. The costs of welfare states, generous unemployment benefits, high taxation rates, strong unions, and centralized wage bargaining were thought to be undermining their competitiveness in an age of rapid...

This book develops a new and conceptually distinctive analysis of Americanization in European and Japanese industry after the Second World War, based on a rich set of sectoral and firm-based studies by an international group of distinguished scholars. The authors highlight the autonomous and...

Throughout the evolution of the modern world economy, new models of productive efficiency and business organization have emerged-in Britain in the nineteenth century, in the US in the early (and perhaps late) twentieth century, and in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s. At each point foreign observers...

This book examines the common challenges confronting the European Union and the United States as they reconfigure work and welfare in a new economy and struggle to develop effective and legitimate governance arrangements. Chapters by leading European and American scholars demonstrate that...

This Handbook provides a state-of-the-art survey of research in business history. Business historians study the historical evolution of business systems, entrepreneurs and firms, as well as their interaction with their political, economic, and social environment. They address issues of central...

Much of the literature on the changing face of US manufacturing acknowledges that successful governance of decentralized production is vital to its future but questions whether in practice firms will engage in the collaborative relationships envisaged by optimistic theorists of a "new production...

The discipline of economics has treated technological standards creation as an outcome of network externalities and decisions on the demand side. They pay little attention to the supply side, where firms make strategic choices as to which standard to support. These choices can ignite a contest...

[eng] Abstract One of the most common explanations given for the economic decline of the United Kingdom after 1945 is the failure of British entrepreneurs to adopt mass methods of production and management. The example of the British metal-works industry does not confirm this model. The...