Practices, Firms and Varieties of Capitalism

Philosophy of Management

Volumn 7, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 77-91

  Keat, Russell ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Capitalist Economy; Corporate Governance; Crew Member; Incremental Innovation; Management Volume

Indexed keywords

EID: 57449119859     PISSN: 17403812     EISSN: 20529597     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5840/pom2008718     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. Alasdair MacIntyre After Virtue Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press 1981, chapters 14–16; for an authoritative guide to MacIntyre’s social and political philosophy,
2. see Kelvin Knight Aristotelian Philosophy: Ethics and Politics from Aristotle to MacIntyre Cambridge, Polity Press 2006, especially pp 124–188
3. This argument builds on the analysis in chapter 6 of Russell Keat Cultural Goods and the Limits of the Market London, Macmillan 2000; see also Geoff Moore and Ron Beadle ‘In Search of Organizational Virtue in Business’ Organization Studies 27 no 3 2006 pp 369–389, where the potential significance of different kinds of capitalism in shaping the ‘environment’ in which businesses operate is noted. That the non-capitalist yet market-based system of market socialism is compatible with production as a practice is argued by Andrew Mason ‘MacIntyre on Modernity and How It Has Marginalized the Virtues’, in Roger Crisp (ed) How Should One Live? pp 191–219 Oxford, Clarendon Press 1996
4. Alasdair MacIntyre ‘A Partial Response to My Critics’ in: J Horton and S Mendus (Eds.) After MacIntyre pp 283–304 Cambridge, Polity Press 1994
5. Ibid pp 284–5
6. Ibid p 285
7. Ibid
8. Ibid pp 285–6 MacIntyre emphasises that the allegiance of crew members to one another extends also to other members of the local community to which they belong: I exclude this element in most of what follows, returning to it in the final section
9. Ibid p 284
10. Peter A Hall and Frank Soskice ‘An Introduction to Varieties of Capitalism’ in: Peter A. Hall and Frank Soskice (Eds.) Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage pp 1–70 Oxford: Oxford University Press 2001
11. Notable contributions to this literature include : Colin Crouch and David Marquand (Eds.) Ethics and Markets: Cooperation and Competition within Capitalist Economies Oxford: Blackwell 1993
12. J Rogers Hollingsworth, Philippe Schmitter and Wolfgang Streeck (Eds.) Governing Capitalist Economies: Performance and Control of Economic Sectors Oxford : Oxford University Press 1994
13. Colin Crouch and Wolfgang Streeck (Eds.) Political Economy of Modern Capitalism: Mapping Convergence and Diversity London, Sage 1997
14. Richard Whitley Divergent Capitalisms: The Social Structuring and Change of Business Systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999
15. Vivien A Schmidt The Futures of European Capitalism Oxford : Oxford University Press 2002
16. On different forms of coordination (or ‘governance’) see the introduction to Hollingsworth, Schmitter and Streeck (Eds.), op. cit pp 3–16. Note that the term ‘Liberal’, in ‘LMEs’, is used in its economic, not its political, sense
17. For detailed analysis, see Sigurt Vitols ‘Varieties of Corporate Governance: Comparing Germany and the UK’ in: Hall and Soskice (Eds.) op. cit pp 337–360
18. On the significance of generic v specific skills, see Margarita Estevez-Abe, Torben Iversen and David Soskice ‘Social Protection and the Formation of Skills: A Reinterpretation of the Welfare State’ in: Hall and Soskice (Eds.) op. cit pp 145–183
19. For further analysis of Japanese capitalism see : Mari Sako ‘ Neither Markets nor Hierarchies: A Comparative Study of the Printed Circuit Board Industry in Britain and Japan ’ in: Hollingsworth, Schmitter and Streeck (Eds.) op. cit pp 17–42
20. Ronald Dore The Distinctiveness of Japan ’ in: Colin Crouch and Wolfgang Streeck (Eds.) op. cit pp 19–32
21. Ronald Dore Stock Market Capitalism : Welfare Capitalism: Japan and Germany versus the Anglo-Saxons Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000
22. Sanford M. Jacoby The Embedded Corporation: Corporate Governance and Employment Relations in Japan and the United States Princeton : Princeton University Press 2005
23. See Maragarita Estevez-Abe et al art. cit. on the relationship between different forms of skills training and the provision of employment and unemployment protection
24. A closely related contrast is between the relational (and hence particularist) understanding of contract in CMEs, as compared with its classical (and hence impersonal) nature in LMEs: see Mari Sako art. cit. See also Alasdair MacIntyre ‘Individual and Social Morality in Japan and the United States: Rival Conceptions of the Self’, Philosophy East and West, 40 no 4 1990 pp 489–497
25. Although Peter A Hall and Frank Soskice implicitly treat Germany and Japan as representing two different types of CME, they do not use this terminology to distinguish them
26. Peter A Hall and Frank Soskice op. cit p 39
27. For analysis of these studies, see Robert Lane The Market Experience Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991. On Robert Lane’s view that market economies tend to prioritise the lesser goods of consumption over the greater ones of satisfying work, see Russell Keat, op. cit Ch 7
28. See Robert Lane, op. cit pp 388–9 on the difference between exercising skills and making ‘excellent’ objects
29. Alasdair MacIntyre ‘A Partial Response to My Critics’ op.cit p 284. On the significance of craftsmanship for MacIntyrean practices, see Geoff Moore ‘Humanizing Business: A Modern Virtue Ethics Approach’ Business Ethics Quarterly 15 no 2 2005 pp 237–255. cf Robert Lane’s remark: “Maximising pay is self-reinforcing, it tends to make materialists of us; attention to work might, on the other hand, make craftsmen of us” (Lane op.cit p 362)
30. Colin Crouch ‘Co-operation and Competition in an Institutionalized Economy: The Case of Germany’ in Colin Crouch and David Marquand (Eds.) op. cit pp 80–98, p 87
31. Alasdair MacIntyre After Virtue pp 177–78; for further discussion, see Keat op. cit pp 120–23
32. Wolfgang Streeck ‘German Capitalism: Does It Exist? Can It Survive?’ in Colin Crouch and Wolfgang Streeck (Eds.) op. cit pp 33–54, p 40
33. For MacIntyre’s critique of management, see Kelvin Knight op. cit pp 126–29, 160–62; for a view of how management might be re-fashioned along MacIntyrean lines, see Geoff Moore ‘Re-imagining the morality of management’, paper at the conference ‘Alasdair MacIntyre’s Revolutionary Aristotelianism’, London Metropolitan University 29 June 2007
34. MacIntyre’s characterization of management seems mainly applicable to the ‘Taylorist’ model of work organization, which Richard Whitley associates with ‘compartmentalized’ business systems (roughly, Hall and Soskice’s LMEs), by contrast with the ‘negotiated’ and ‘paternalist’ models associated respectively with ‘collaborative’ (HCMEs) and ‘highly coordinated’ (VCMEs) systems: see Richard Whitley op. cit Ch. 4
35. Wolfgang Streeck art. cit p 40
36. Colin Crouch art. cit p 89
37. Peter A Hall and Frank Soskice, op. cit p.40; italics added
38. Alasdair MacIntyre After Virtue p. 181
39. See my discussion of the distinction in Russell Keat op. cit pp 111- 115, and of the institutional design of science as a practice in chapter 5
40. also Geoff Moore ‘ On the Practice- Institution Distinction ’ Business Ethics Quarterly 12 no 1 (2002) pp 19–32
41. Some institutional economists, such as North, insist on a distinction between organisations, such as firms, and institutions, which he describes as the ‘rules of the game’ in which individual firms are the ‘players’: Douglass North Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1990 pp 3–6
42. Alasdair MacIntyre After Virtue p181 italics added
43. Even if this specific claim about HCMEs is incorrect, it points to the significance for practices of a kind of institution which is often ignored: we need to consider not only chess clubs, laboratories and hospitals, but also chess club federations, institutes of physics, and associations of medical practitioners
44. One possibly questionable element of the ‘mapping’ is that of practices onto industries. An alternative might be occupations, so that the relevant ‘horizontal associations’ would not be of firms in the same industry (e.g. ship-building) but of individuals with the same occupational qualifications (e.g. welders, designers, accountants–even managers!) that can be used in different industries
45. This points towards a major element missing from my analysis, namely any attempt to differentiate the specific virtues of each kind of capitalism. For a fieldwork-based investigation of the merger between Halifax Building Society and the Bank of Scotland which includes reference to this, see: Jonathan Hearn ‘National Identity: Banal, Personal and Embedded’ Nations and Nationalism 13 no 4 2007 pp 651–674
46. This also raises the possibility that although HCMEs are closer to practices than LMEs, both are a long way Off
47. See Richard Whitley op. cit Chapter 4 on the strength of certain high status occupational groups in ‘compartmentalised’ business systems (roughly corresponding to LMEs)
48. For an argument that implies, in the terms I have been using, that the USA has only become an LME quite recently, see William Lazonick and Mary O’Sullivan ‘Maximising shareholder value: a new ideology for corporate capitalism’ Economy and Society 29 no 1 (2000) pp 13–35. See also Wolfgang Streeck and Kathleen Thelen (Eds.) Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005
49. See the introduction to Alasdair MacIntyre Marxism and Christianity (revised edition) London, Duckworth 1995, reprinted as ‘Three perspectives on Marxism: 1953, 1968, 1995’ in Alasdair MacIntyre Ethics and Politics: Selected Essays Vol 2 Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2006 pp 145 — 158
50. See Alasdair MacIntyre ‘ Politics, Philosophy and the Common Good ’ in: Kelvin Knight (ed) The MacIntyre Reader pp 235–252 Cambridge, Polity Press 1998
51. Alasdair MacIntyre Dependent Rational Animals London, Duckworth 1999, chapters 9–11
52. Alasdair MacIntyre, ‘A Partial Response to My Critics’ op.cit pp 284–86
53. For criticism of MacIntyre’s politics of local community see Mark Murphy ‘ MacIntyre’s Political Philosophy ’ in Mark Murphy (Ed.) Alasdair MacIntyre pp 152–175 Cambridge : Cambridge University Press 2003
54. Keith Breen ‘ The State, Compartmentalization and the Turn to Local Community ’, European Legacy 10 no 5 2005 pp. 485–501
55. See Peter A Hall and Frank Soskice op. cit
56. For example, David Miller On Nationality Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998
57. Wolfgang Streeck art. cit pp 51–3
58. See Margarita Estevez-Abe et al. art.cit
59. ‘A slow-moving, value-based economy will be conservative rather than liberal. The rules characteristic of liberalism are those of exit, not voice: commitments to other actors in the system are on a casual ‘take it or leave it’ basis. As a result there are no great anxieties about recognising new actors. When it is easy to drop and discard, there is less need to worry about who to take up. That is the great attraction about this model of society, seen most clearly in the USA. Germany is not like that. Once admission to the system is achieved, an interest becomes part of the web of mutual obligations that cannot easily be ended. Therefore, initial admission is more problematic.’ (Colin Crouch art. cit p 90)
60. For example, William James Booth has argued that ‘household’ economies of the kind MacIntyre seems to favour are always hierarchical and exclusionary, by contrast with the individual freedom and equality of market economies: William James Booth Households: On the Moral Architecture of the Economy Ithaca, Cornell University Press 1993