Pub Date : 2023-04-19DOI: 10.1177/10245294231168521
V. Stadheim
A widely held view in economics and comparative capitalism states that the crisis in the eurozone was a crisis of labour cost competitiveness. This view maintains that a divergence in unit labour costs engendered a cleavage between the euro area’s core and periphery. Critics have disputed this and drawn attention to export specialisation, along with global competition, rather than intra-European competition. To make progress on this agenda, this article focuses on structures of production as a source of crisis vulnerability. It advances the notion that countries have unique forms of articulation within global capitalism, and that this matters to understanding national crisis trajectories. Focussing on the Portuguese case, the article scrutinises the interactions between export specialisation, global competition and industrial decline. The article shows that Portugal’s current account deficit developed within a context of industrial change and deindustrialisation, which was facilitated competition from China and Eastern Europe. By stressing industrial patterns and global competition, the article provides a more concrete analysis of production than most accounts of the eurozone crisis.
{"title":"Product specialisation, global competition, and industrial decline: Portugal’s path to crisis","authors":"V. Stadheim","doi":"10.1177/10245294231168521","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294231168521","url":null,"abstract":"A widely held view in economics and comparative capitalism states that the crisis in the eurozone was a crisis of labour cost competitiveness. This view maintains that a divergence in unit labour costs engendered a cleavage between the euro area’s core and periphery. Critics have disputed this and drawn attention to export specialisation, along with global competition, rather than intra-European competition. To make progress on this agenda, this article focuses on structures of production as a source of crisis vulnerability. It advances the notion that countries have unique forms of articulation within global capitalism, and that this matters to understanding national crisis trajectories. Focussing on the Portuguese case, the article scrutinises the interactions between export specialisation, global competition and industrial decline. The article shows that Portugal’s current account deficit developed within a context of industrial change and deindustrialisation, which was facilitated competition from China and Eastern Europe. By stressing industrial patterns and global competition, the article provides a more concrete analysis of production than most accounts of the eurozone crisis.","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45583374","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-17DOI: 10.1177/10245294231168935
George Liagouras
The article presents a constructive critique of the ‘financialization of the firm’ hypothesis. Without calling into question the idea that financialization has been a major structural change over the last four decades, it argues that the financialization of the firm argument has been pushed too far, especially regarding its ‘crowding-out’ and ‘drain’ effects on investment. Instead, the capacity of finance to accelerate the process of ‘creative destruction’ through the reallocation of capital has not been sufficiently taken into consideration. Consequently, the corporate financialization approaches tend to underestimate other structural changes in business organization, like the associated rise of Global Value Chains (GVCs) and intangible investments, both conceptualized by the ‘smiling curve’ notion. These secular changes challenge the categories of investment and capital we inherited from industrial capitalism. It remains, however, that we do not know how to measure intangible investment.
{"title":"Beyond corporate financialization: From global value chains to the conundrum of intangible investments","authors":"George Liagouras","doi":"10.1177/10245294231168935","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294231168935","url":null,"abstract":"The article presents a constructive critique of the ‘financialization of the firm’ hypothesis. Without calling into question the idea that financialization has been a major structural change over the last four decades, it argues that the financialization of the firm argument has been pushed too far, especially regarding its ‘crowding-out’ and ‘drain’ effects on investment. Instead, the capacity of finance to accelerate the process of ‘creative destruction’ through the reallocation of capital has not been sufficiently taken into consideration. Consequently, the corporate financialization approaches tend to underestimate other structural changes in business organization, like the associated rise of Global Value Chains (GVCs) and intangible investments, both conceptualized by the ‘smiling curve’ notion. These secular changes challenge the categories of investment and capital we inherited from industrial capitalism. It remains, however, that we do not know how to measure intangible investment.","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46718259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-01DOI: 10.1177/10245294221095222
Salam Alshareef
Oil trade-related monetary arrangements have far-reaching impacts on the international monetary system and the global financial circuit. Current arrangements were set in the mid-1970s through the establishment of the petrodollar regime. This article empirically assesses the effective and potential impacts of the change in the integration pattern of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in the global economy on the two pillars of the petrodollar: recycling oil export revenue into the US economy and invoicing oil exclusively in dollars. The results show that the effectiveness of the petrodollar regime has been significantly reduced as China has overtaken the United States as the largest destination for the recycling of the oil receipts from the GCC through the trade channel. This article investigates the possible further expansion of oil settlements in the renminbi (RMB), based on China–GCC relations, following China’s release of the petroyuan contracts. The structure and the weight of their trade and investment relations constitute solid grounds to settle bilateral oil trade in RMBs. Moreover, China’s targeted and regulated financial opening provides operating channels for overseas holders of RMBs to invest in China’s relatively attractive assets. To better discern the GCC’s inclination to change their oil-invoicing arrangements, this article analyses their participation in the RMB internationalization channel.
{"title":"The Gulf’s shifting geoeconomy and China’s structural power: From the petrodollar to the petroyuan?","authors":"Salam Alshareef","doi":"10.1177/10245294221095222","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294221095222","url":null,"abstract":"Oil trade-related monetary arrangements have far-reaching impacts on the international monetary system and the global financial circuit. Current arrangements were set in the mid-1970s through the establishment of the petrodollar regime. This article empirically assesses the effective and potential impacts of the change in the integration pattern of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in the global economy on the two pillars of the petrodollar: recycling oil export revenue into the US economy and invoicing oil exclusively in dollars. The results show that the effectiveness of the petrodollar regime has been significantly reduced as China has overtaken the United States as the largest destination for the recycling of the oil receipts from the GCC through the trade channel. This article investigates the possible further expansion of oil settlements in the renminbi (RMB), based on China–GCC relations, following China’s release of the petroyuan contracts. The structure and the weight of their trade and investment relations constitute solid grounds to settle bilateral oil trade in RMBs. Moreover, China’s targeted and regulated financial opening provides operating channels for overseas holders of RMBs to invest in China’s relatively attractive assets. To better discern the GCC’s inclination to change their oil-invoicing arrangements, this article analyses their participation in the RMB internationalization channel.","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44349789","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-20DOI: 10.1177/10245294231164699
Lutz Preuss
The international spread of the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has ignited a debate whether CSR is universally applicable or context dependent. To shed new light on this question, I propose to treat CSR as a management idea that consists of nested levels of abstraction, namely relatively abstract ‘management rhetorics’, within which more prescriptive ‘management models’ reside, which contain concrete ‘management techniques’. I then analyse the global diffusion of one CSR management technique, a CSR guidance document by UK-based business association Business in the Community (BITC), which suggests that companies could address CSR as four material areas: Workplace, Environment, Marketplace and Community. Following its life-cycle through the innovation, diffusion, institutionalization, dormancy and rebirth stages allows me to identify forms of horizontal diffusion, that is, diffusion among peers within a particular sector or country, and vertical diffusion, that is, between organizations that stand in a hierarchical relationship to each other. At each stage of the life-cycle, the success of the management technique seems to be aided by factors that treat the management technique as universally applicable. In themselves, all of these claims to universal applicability are easily countered by a more critical reading of the argumentation; yet, it is the way in which the nested levels influence each other, that is, the management technique feeding into management models and management rhetorics, that tends to give the notion of universal applicability of CSR its persuasiveness.
{"title":"Corporate social responsibility as management idea: Between universal applicability and context dependency","authors":"Lutz Preuss","doi":"10.1177/10245294231164699","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294231164699","url":null,"abstract":"The international spread of the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has ignited a debate whether CSR is universally applicable or context dependent. To shed new light on this question, I propose to treat CSR as a management idea that consists of nested levels of abstraction, namely relatively abstract ‘management rhetorics’, within which more prescriptive ‘management models’ reside, which contain concrete ‘management techniques’. I then analyse the global diffusion of one CSR management technique, a CSR guidance document by UK-based business association Business in the Community (BITC), which suggests that companies could address CSR as four material areas: Workplace, Environment, Marketplace and Community. Following its life-cycle through the innovation, diffusion, institutionalization, dormancy and rebirth stages allows me to identify forms of horizontal diffusion, that is, diffusion among peers within a particular sector or country, and vertical diffusion, that is, between organizations that stand in a hierarchical relationship to each other. At each stage of the life-cycle, the success of the management technique seems to be aided by factors that treat the management technique as universally applicable. In themselves, all of these claims to universal applicability are easily countered by a more critical reading of the argumentation; yet, it is the way in which the nested levels influence each other, that is, the management technique feeding into management models and management rhetorics, that tends to give the notion of universal applicability of CSR its persuasiveness.","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91341776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-11DOI: 10.1177/10245294231162176
Andrea Éltető, Gergő Medve-Bálint
Most foreign capital-led, export-oriented Eastern EU member states and the consumption-driven Southern European countries suffered a heavy blow during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008–09. The GFC exposed the vulnerability of these economies to external shocks and raised the need for readjustment of their growth models through state intervention. While the rise of illiberal governments drove readjustment in the East, the main driver was externally fomented in the South. This article focuses on state aid, a particular instrument of industrial policy, which has been a main vehicle for growth model readjustment. We seek to explore whether the provision of state aid in the two European semi-peripheries contributes to long-term post-crisis recovery by promoting competitive investments in two Eastern (Hungary and Poland) and two Southern EU members (Portugal and Spain). Relying on the European Commission’s state aid database, we show that after 2013, in the consumption-driven South, governments aimed to strengthen supply through aid, while in the export-oriented East, they were more concerned about promoting exporting firms. The article thus reveals how state aid may preserve and reinforce existing growth models in the semi-periphery even if strategic aims and rhetoric target readjustment.
{"title":"Illiberal Versus Externally Fomented growth model readjustment: post-GFC state aid in the EU’s semi-periphery","authors":"Andrea Éltető, Gergő Medve-Bálint","doi":"10.1177/10245294231162176","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294231162176","url":null,"abstract":"Most foreign capital-led, export-oriented Eastern EU member states and the consumption-driven Southern European countries suffered a heavy blow during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008–09. The GFC exposed the vulnerability of these economies to external shocks and raised the need for readjustment of their growth models through state intervention. While the rise of illiberal governments drove readjustment in the East, the main driver was externally fomented in the South. This article focuses on state aid, a particular instrument of industrial policy, which has been a main vehicle for growth model readjustment. We seek to explore whether the provision of state aid in the two European semi-peripheries contributes to long-term post-crisis recovery by promoting competitive investments in two Eastern (Hungary and Poland) and two Southern EU members (Portugal and Spain). Relying on the European Commission’s state aid database, we show that after 2013, in the consumption-driven South, governments aimed to strengthen supply through aid, while in the export-oriented East, they were more concerned about promoting exporting firms. The article thus reveals how state aid may preserve and reinforce existing growth models in the semi-periphery even if strategic aims and rhetoric target readjustment.","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46997915","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-18DOI: 10.1177/10245294231153028
Thomas Da Costa Vieira
In this article, I show that current literature on authoritarian neoliberalism has not only overlooked the crucial role of legitimation in authoritarian neoliberal regimes, both pre- and post-2008, it has also failed to properly conceptualise it. While existing scholarship mainly pictures neoliberal governments as pursuing legitimation to ensure accumulation remains unopposed, I instead argue that neoliberal governments see legitimation as an instrument of, and precondition for, accumulation – as directly feeding into it. Indeed, my contribution shows that governments aim to transform citizens into neoliberal subjects that actively and willingly participate in neoliberal accumulation. I call this project, which relies on state-driven mass behavioural change, a strategy of ‘accumulation by legitimation’. The article illustrates this with the case of Thatcherism, analysing newly released governmental archival sources through a Marxist-Foucauldian framework. I unearth the Thatcher government’s propaganda campaign and employee involvement policy, which were a combined effort to influence the British people through governmental education, share ownership as well as communication and consultation in industry. The objective was to turn British workers into self-identifying capitalists that would willingly support the market order and accept its imperatives by themselves, such as the need to moderate their own wage demands. Thatcherites saw this as a prerequisite for their employment and counter-inflationary policies to work. This far-reaching strategy however faced significant obstacles, both from inside government and from British capital, illustrating key contradictions in neoliberalism. While neoliberal ideas endure, this sheds light on the incomplete and fragile character of neoliberal hegemony up to today.
{"title":"‘In time, every worker a capitalist’: Accumulation by legitimation and authoritarian neoliberalism in Thatcher’s Britain","authors":"Thomas Da Costa Vieira","doi":"10.1177/10245294231153028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294231153028","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I show that current literature on authoritarian neoliberalism has not only overlooked the crucial role of legitimation in authoritarian neoliberal regimes, both pre- and post-2008, it has also failed to properly conceptualise it. While existing scholarship mainly pictures neoliberal governments as pursuing legitimation to ensure accumulation remains unopposed, I instead argue that neoliberal governments see legitimation as an instrument of, and precondition for, accumulation – as directly feeding into it. Indeed, my contribution shows that governments aim to transform citizens into neoliberal subjects that actively and willingly participate in neoliberal accumulation. I call this project, which relies on state-driven mass behavioural change, a strategy of ‘accumulation by legitimation’. The article illustrates this with the case of Thatcherism, analysing newly released governmental archival sources through a Marxist-Foucauldian framework. I unearth the Thatcher government’s propaganda campaign and employee involvement policy, which were a combined effort to influence the British people through governmental education, share ownership as well as communication and consultation in industry. The objective was to turn British workers into self-identifying capitalists that would willingly support the market order and accept its imperatives by themselves, such as the need to moderate their own wage demands. Thatcherites saw this as a prerequisite for their employment and counter-inflationary policies to work. This far-reaching strategy however faced significant obstacles, both from inside government and from British capital, illustrating key contradictions in neoliberalism. While neoliberal ideas endure, this sheds light on the incomplete and fragile character of neoliberal hegemony up to today.","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2023-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46833696","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-01-01DOI: 10.1177/10245294211055612
Philip Balsiger, Thomas Jammet, Nicola Cianferoni, Muriel Surdez
How do organizations in a sector where powerful platforms have emerged cope with the new constraints and opportunities that platforms induce? A growing number of studies highlight the power of digital platforms to re-organize markets and thereby create new forms of dependence. But there are also indications that organizations are capable of countering platform power especially by demanding their regulation. This paper expands this view to investigate also strategies at the organizational level. It draws on the algorithmic game studies of strategic responses to environmental changes to study how organizations strategically respond to the rise of digital platforms. To show organizations' capacities to cope with the new digital market environment, we use a qualitative case study of the Swiss hotel sector and its reactions to so-called online travel agencies, based on interviews with hotel managers and professional representatives. We distinguish between three types of hotels-small family-run, luxury, and chain hotels, and identify three types of strategic responses: bypassing, optimizing, and mitigating. Contrary to a platform power perspective, we find some evidence for organizations' capacity to keep platforms at bay, by limiting dependence through mitigation, and platforms' reach through bypassing. Hotels also learn to "play the algorithmic game" and take advantage of platforms' technological affordances, but such strategies seem to accommodate platform power rather than countering it. Finally, we find that hotels with fewer resources (small family-run hotels) are less equipped to counter platform power, suggesting that platforms risk fostering existing hierarchies and segmentation in markets.
{"title":"Coping with digital market re-organization: How the hotel industry strategically responds to digital platform power.","authors":"Philip Balsiger, Thomas Jammet, Nicola Cianferoni, Muriel Surdez","doi":"10.1177/10245294211055612","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294211055612","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>How do organizations in a sector where powerful platforms have emerged cope with the new constraints and opportunities that platforms induce? A growing number of studies highlight the power of digital platforms to re-organize markets and thereby create new forms of dependence. But there are also indications that organizations are capable of countering platform power especially by demanding their regulation. This paper expands this view to investigate also strategies at the organizational level. It draws on the algorithmic game studies of strategic responses to environmental changes to study how organizations strategically respond to the rise of digital platforms. To show organizations' capacities to cope with the new digital market environment, we use a qualitative case study of the Swiss hotel sector and its reactions to so-called online travel agencies, based on interviews with hotel managers and professional representatives. We distinguish between three types of hotels-small family-run, luxury, and chain hotels, and identify three types of strategic responses: bypassing, optimizing, and mitigating. Contrary to a platform power perspective, we find some evidence for organizations' capacity to keep platforms at bay, by limiting dependence through mitigation, and platforms' reach through bypassing. Hotels also learn to \"play the algorithmic game\" and take advantage of platforms' technological affordances, but such strategies seem to accommodate platform power rather than countering it. Finally, we find that hotels with fewer resources (small family-run hotels) are less equipped to counter platform power, suggesting that platforms risk fostering existing hierarchies and segmentation in markets.</p>","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9780750/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10453827","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-09DOI: 10.1177/10245294221146218
Thibault Darcillon
{"title":"Book review: Labor in the Age of Finance. Pensions, politics and corporations from deindustrialization to Dodd-Frank","authors":"Thibault Darcillon","doi":"10.1177/10245294221146218","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294221146218","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2022-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41613683","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-25DOI: 10.1177/10245294221139524
Milan Babic, Adam D. Dixon, Jan Fichtner
Existing studies have scrutinized the rise of states as global owners and investors, yet we still lack a good understanding of what state investment does in a globalized economy, especially in host...
{"title":"Varieties of state capital: What does foreign state-led investment do in a globalized world?","authors":"Milan Babic, Adam D. Dixon, Jan Fichtner","doi":"10.1177/10245294221139524","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294221139524","url":null,"abstract":"Existing studies have scrutinized the rise of states as global owners and investors, yet we still lack a good understanding of what state investment does in a globalized economy, especially in host...","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2022-11-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138534096","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-10-17DOI: 10.1177/10245294221133534
Viktor Skyrman
Departing from the Regulation Approach and the concept of spatio-temporal fixes, this article analyses how different mechanisms of financialization have ameliorated and accelerated crisis-tendencies in the North European forest industry and its implications for labour, suppliers and corporate R&D. Although wood products can potentially ameliorate the climate crisis by substituting plastics, petrochemicals, polyester and various other applications from fossils, firms have been slow to advance into these higher value-added segments. Instead, under an increasingly financialized accumulation regime, innovation has been undermined through R&D downsizing while dividends have been increased to shareholders at labour’s expense. Meanwhile, amid ultra-low interest rates, the industry’s profitability has been supported by appreciating forest assets that are increasingly treated as a new financial asset class by the financial sector. Evidently, while some mechanisms of financialization are detrimental to firms, the financialization of forests has constituted a profitability-enhancing socioecological fix (McCarthy, 2015; Ekers & Prudham, 2017) not only for financial capital (Ekers, 2019) but also for non-financial firms themselves. In the long run, however, it is highly uncertain if forest asset prices can be kept from depreciating amid the problems of profitability, weakened ecological carrying capacity, rising interest rates and strained supplier relations.
{"title":"Industrial restructuring, spatio-temporal fixes and the financialization of the North European forest industry","authors":"Viktor Skyrman","doi":"10.1177/10245294221133534","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10245294221133534","url":null,"abstract":"Departing from the Regulation Approach and the concept of spatio-temporal fixes, this article analyses how different mechanisms of financialization have ameliorated and accelerated crisis-tendencies in the North European forest industry and its implications for labour, suppliers and corporate R&D. Although wood products can potentially ameliorate the climate crisis by substituting plastics, petrochemicals, polyester and various other applications from fossils, firms have been slow to advance into these higher value-added segments. Instead, under an increasingly financialized accumulation regime, innovation has been undermined through R&D downsizing while dividends have been increased to shareholders at labour’s expense. Meanwhile, amid ultra-low interest rates, the industry’s profitability has been supported by appreciating forest assets that are increasingly treated as a new financial asset class by the financial sector. Evidently, while some mechanisms of financialization are detrimental to firms, the financialization of forests has constituted a profitability-enhancing socioecological fix (McCarthy, 2015; Ekers & Prudham, 2017) not only for financial capital (Ekers, 2019) but also for non-financial firms themselves. In the long run, however, it is highly uncertain if forest asset prices can be kept from depreciating amid the problems of profitability, weakened ecological carrying capacity, rising interest rates and strained supplier relations.","PeriodicalId":46999,"journal":{"name":"Competition & Change","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.9,"publicationDate":"2022-10-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47365688","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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