This paper analyses trust and power as means of co-ordinating trans-organizational relationships. It is argued that, depending on the institutional environment, there are two distinct patterns of controlling relationships, where trust and power are interrelated in quite different ways. First,...

This chapter addresses the changing nature of corporate governance in the United Kingdom over recent decades and examines whether these changes have had an impact on the UK market for corporate control. The disappointing outcomes for acquiring company shareholders in the majority of corporate...

This paper explores the legal and normative implications of the idea that the labour market is a spontaneous order or self-organising system which rests on set of mutually-reinforcing conventions which are themselves the outcome of an evolutionary process. It is suggested that the role of...

We examine the announcement and post-acquisition share returns of 4,000 acquisitions by U.K. public firms during 1984-1998. We include acquisitions of domestic and cross-border targets, and of both publicly quoted and privately held targets. In acquisitions of domestic public targets, abnormal...

Prior to the industrial revolution, the predominant form of economic organization in western Europe and north America was the guild. Guilds were network forms, loose associations of independent producers, with strong local and regional identities, in which cooperation and competition were...

This paper looks at the profound transitions Japan is currently experiencing, focusing on 'techno-entrepreneurship' and ideological currents of nationalism and internationalism. After a brief examination of Japan's financial crisis, it focuses on manufacturing, both in large firms - with a case...

The institutions of productive systems are structured by mutual interests and relative power. Securing mutually beneficial cooperation in production requires resolving distributional differences. These objectives are secured in liberal economic theory by the working of markets which mediate the...

This paper assesses the effect of differences in types of client on the use and impact of business advice by SMEs in Britain using new survey evidence from the Cambridge ESRC Centre for Business Research Survey of 1997. The survey, covering over 2500 respondents, is the largest and most...

This paper critically examines the Greenspan-Summers-IMF thesis concerning the Asian crisis, which suggested that the fundamental causes of the Asian crisis lay in the microeconomic behavior of economic agents in these societies - in the Asian way of doing business. The paper concentrates on...

This paper reports the findings of a longitudinal study into manufacturing performance, lean production principles and buyer supplier relations in the Japanese, US and UK automotive industries. A total of 26 first tier component makers in the three countries were subject to detailed benchmarking...