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Authors:Tobias J Klinge, Reijer Hendrikse, Rodrigo Fernandez, Ilke Adriaans Abstract: Competition & Change, Ahead of Print. Building on the notion of corporate financialization, this article analyzes the financial dynamics of the world’s largest digital platforms over the period 2000–2020: Alibaba, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, and Tencent. These “Big Tech” corporations jointly form the infrastructural core of the digital economy. Taking cues from critical media studies and political economy, we probe their financial statements according to three stylized indicators of corporate financialization: (i) expanding financial assets and debt; (ii) augmenting asset structures, with intangible assets in the form of goodwill ballooning alongside tangible capital; and (iii) maximizing shareholder value. Our findings point to commonalities among the ‘avantgarde of digital capitalism’, where feedback loops between mounting market dominance, data extraction, and above-average profits have been successfully leveraged with key tools of corporate financialization to accelerate Big Tech’s infrastructural dominance across economy and society. Citation: Competition & Change PubDate: 2022-06-20T12:19:27Z DOI: 10.1177/10245294221105573
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Authors:Frédéric Marty, Thierry Warin Abstract: Competition & Change, Ahead of Print. We propose a simple theoretical model emphasizing the importance of a multi-sided platform (MSP) in fostering innovation. This model aims to assess the effects of structuring industries around an MSP on innovation dynamics and emphasizes the impact of cross-platform competition. It teaches us how to encourage cross-platform competition in terms of competition policy. The outcome is threefold. To begin, the presence of an MSP is critical for market innovation. Second, our findings indicate that skewed market power in favor of the MSP may stifle innovation in this industry, even if the negative impact on the industry’s rate of innovation is not immediately apparent. Finally, we demonstrate that industries with multiple MSPs have a higher rate of innovation. The model’s conclusions emphasize the critical importance of preserving the contestability of digital markets through competition rules enforcement. Even if the inherent technical characteristics of this industry result in a situation of dominance, competition rules should aim to preserve the possibility of market competition through, among other things, interoperability requirements, data portability requirements, and control of exclusivity clauses. Citation: Competition & Change PubDate: 2022-06-18T01:06:17Z DOI: 10.1177/10245294221085639
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Authors:Andrea Szalavetz Abstract: Competition & Change, Ahead of Print. Drawing on data from Hungarian manufacturing companies, this paper aims to explore the ways in which digital technologies affect the nature and routineness of work. It concludes that digital technologies impinge on some defining features of occupations, such as workload and intensity of work; the degree to which the tasks can be explicitly defined, measured and codified; composition and amount of skills required for task execution; and the importance of experience or tacit knowledge for task execution. Non-technological factors, such as managerial approach to technology and work design moderate outcomes. Evidence indicates that a reduction in the routine content of job tasks applies only to relatively skilled employees. For low-skilled employees, certain digital assistance solutions increase routine and engender deskilling. We conclude that a qualitative enrichment of shopfloor work becomes apparent only if (1) employees are skilled enough to become upskilled – and thus engaged not only in digitally enabled but also in digitally augmented, high-value activities; (2) employees’ work tasks are reorganised, work design and work practices modified, and employees upskilled. Without appropriate managerial interventions envisaging the augmentation of work, digital technology implementation entails deskilling and/or technological unemployment, rather than providing richer dimensions to shopfloor work. Citation: Competition & Change PubDate: 2022-06-10T05:14:35Z DOI: 10.1177/10245294221107489
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Authors:Bartholomew Paudyn Abstract: Competition & Change, Ahead of Print. Repeated crises have proven credit rating agency (CRA) models/methods erroneous and “business-as-usual” unsustainable. Nevertheless, considerable dubious “default risk” management and technoscientific capitalist expertise remain unchanged. Unpacking sovereign ratings, we appreciate how “debt sustainability analysis” (DSA) distortions underpin expertocratic CRA (default) anomaly. Their neoliberal “politics of limits” performance helps market (shareholder) imperatives trump those of democratic (stakeholder) politics. Given surging inflation and debt (distress) to remedy Covid-19-induced shocks, ratings aid constitute and (re)validate the subjectivities/affinities and organizational conditions advancing a “self-equilibrating,” “self-generative” agencement political economy of creditworthiness (PEC). Antagonizing sustainable budgetary government’s programmatic/expertocratic and operational/democratic asymmetry, econophysics ratings diminish fiscal sovereignty. Universal PEC management through hybrid credit risk/uncertainty qualculation mitigates negative externality contestation shielding CRAs from serious reform. Ratings procyclicality and contagion reinforce this precarious sociotechnical agencement PEC as the status quo. Citation: Competition & Change PubDate: 2022-06-09T03:53:22Z DOI: 10.1177/10245294221105567
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Authors:Juan M Graña, Sebastián Fernández Franco, David Flacher, Cecilia Rikap Abstract: Competition & Change, Ahead of Print. This paper examines the innovation strategy of Siemens, a key player in Europe’s digital economy, by performing network and lexical analyses using data derived from Siemens’s patents and scientific publications since 1998. We observe that the company’s innovation efforts evolved from a broader attempt to develop internal information and communication technology (ICT) capabilities – alongside its historical industrial priorities – to a strategy focused on developing artificial intelligence (AI) for sector-specific and niche applications (such as life and medical sciences). As a result, it became dependent on tech giants’ clouds for accessing more general AI services and digital infrastructure. We build on the intellectual monopoly literature focusing on the effects of tech giants on other leading corporations, to analyse Siemens’s experience. By abandoning the development of general ICT and given the emergence of tech giants as digital economy intellectual monopolies, we show that Siemens is risking its technological autonomy towards these big tech companies. Our results provide clues to understand the challenges faced by Europe and its firms in relation to US and Chinese tech giants. Citation: Competition & Change PubDate: 2022-05-21T01:22:03Z DOI: 10.1177/10245294221097066
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Authors:Fabio Bulfone, Timur Ergen, Manolis Kalaitzake Abstract: Competition & Change, Ahead of Print. This paper contributes to Comparative Political Economy (CPE) by developing an analytical concept of corporate welfare. Corporate welfare—the transfer of public funds and benefits to corporate actors with weak or no conditionality—is a prominent form of state-business relations that CPE scholarship regularly overlooks and misinterprets. Such transfers should be understood as a structural privilege of business in a globalized post-Fordist capitalism, and an increasingly common strategy through which states attempt to steward national economic dynamism within a highly constrained range of policy options. However, without a well-developed concept of corporate welfare—premised upon the key criterion of conditionality—studies that identify a “return” of the state in industrial planning misrepresent these transfers to business as a reassertion of state influence and control, rather than a reflection of state weakness and subordination. The paper provides the analytical building blocks to properly conceptualize transfers to business, works out the core challenges for empirical research, and provides empirical illustrations of this burgeoning phenomenon from the fields of unconventional monetary policy, privatization, and urban political economy. Citation: Competition & Change PubDate: 2022-05-18T06:36:53Z DOI: 10.1177/10245294221101145
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Authors:Hong Liu, Guanie Lim Abstract: Competition & Change, Ahead of Print. Extending the growing literature within international political economy, this article puts forth the notion of transnational state capitalism, taking into account the anaemic growth gripping the global economy since the 2008 economic crisis and China’s massive efforts to export infrastructure following the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013. Focussing on the agencies, practices and outcomes of the Jakarta-Bandung High Speed Rail, one of the largest infrastructure undertakings in Southeast Asia since the BRI’s inception, this article explores how and to what extent state capitalism has shaped the political economy of a rising China in Indonesia. We identify three characteristics of an emerging transnational state capitalism in Southeast Asia: state-centric in its overall direction and operation; simultaneous pursuit of economic-cum-geopolitical interests; and an inability to stem structural weaknesses associated with statist economic directives (which have been further complicated by its intertwining with host state dynamics). Our central argument is that although this project was initially conceived as a business-to-business arrangement, it has increased the appeal of state intervention in a transnational context. The driving forces include Indonesia’s political economy and the Chinese state-owned enterprises’ dual agenda of seeking profits and advancing geopolitical goals. We also argue that the project’s statist nature has brought about some side-effects such as inefficient resource allocation and incumbency bias, thus raising concerns about the vulnerability of state capitalist models. Our findings highlight the importance of conceptualizing the transnational state against the backdrop of a globalizing China, going beyond parochial understandings of this increasingly salient phenomenon. Citation: Competition & Change PubDate: 2022-05-18T05:55:46Z DOI: 10.1177/10245294221103069
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Authors:Samson Afewerki, Markus Steen Abstract: Competition & Change, Ahead of Print. Global production networks (GPN) research has given limited attention to lead firms’ competitive strategies in emerging project-based industries (PBIs). Informed by the industry life cycle approach, the authors develop a process-sensitive approach that unpacks the black-boxed notion of lead firms’ competitive capabilities development processes to address this gap. The approach is operationalized in the analysis of the evolutionary trajectories of Ørsted (Denmark) and Equinor (Norway) in the emerging offshore wind power industry. Analytically, the authors differentiate between lead firms’ pre-entry, entry, and post-entry scope-related and scale-related competitive capabilities development processes. They demonstrate how these processes are shaped by industry characteristics and co-evolve with broader industry developments and extra-firm dynamics. Through this novel perspective, the paper extends conventional wisdom on the role GPNs as facilitators of knowledge transfer and of local and regional capability formation and development. The authors argue that GPNs can also facilitate both knowledge transfer to and competitive capability formation by (lead) firms. Citation: Competition & Change PubDate: 2022-05-18T01:36:17Z DOI: 10.1177/10245294221103072
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Authors:Timur Ergen, Sebastian Kohl, Benjamin Braun Abstract: Competition & Change, Ahead of Print. The discipline of comparative political economy (CPE) relies heavily on aggregate, country-level economic indicators. However, the practices of multinational corporations have increasingly undermined this approach to measurement. The problem of indicator drift is well documented by a growing critical literature and calls for systematic methodological attention in CPE. We present the case for a rocky but ultimately rewarding middle road between indicator fatalism and indicator faith. We illustrate our argument by examining two important cases—Sweden’s recent export success and the financialization of non-financial corporations in France. A careful parsing of the data suggests corrections to common characterizations of the two cases. Swedish exports have been reshaped by intragroup trade among foreign subsidiaries of domestic corporations. The growth of financial assets held by French firms is attributable to the growth of foreign direct investment and to cumulative revaluation effects, while what remains of financialization is concentrated among the very largest firms. Based on these findings, we propose a methodological routine that parses data by zooming in on the qualitative specifics of countries, sectors, and firms, while using all available options for disaggregation. Citation: Competition & Change PubDate: 2022-05-17T08:12:50Z DOI: 10.1177/10245294221093704
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Authors:Daniel Gay Abstract: Competition & Change, Ahead of Print.
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Authors:Achalie Kumarage Abstract: Competition & Change, Ahead of Print.
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Authors:Salam Alshareef Abstract: Competition & Change, Ahead of Print. 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 effectiveness of the United States as the largest destination for GCC countries for the sake of accuracy we should maintain "through the trade channel". so the phrase would read as follows: China has overtaken the United States as the largest destination for the recycling of the oil receipts from the 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. Citation: Competition & Change PubDate: 2022-04-28T10:35:58Z DOI: 10.1177/10245294221095222
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Authors:Andrei Guter-Sandu Abstract: Competition & Change, Ahead of Print. Impact investing has emerged as a topical subject-matter for scholars working at the intersection between finance and social policy. By and large, it is seen as a product of financialization: some argue that the social is colonized by financial actors and methods, others see it as a site where boundary work produces a state of value plurality in which competing values—social and financial—co-exist. This article takes the latter perspective further and unpacks the endogenous dynamics underpinning the creation of social values in impact investing programs. It analyzes how high-level organizations in the field prescribed specific social impact valuation processes and mechanisms for collecting, measuring, and reporting data about value creation. It argues that the social values circulating in the impact investing field emerge from the interplay between a wide array of stakeholders, impact investors included. The social impact accounting tools that capture them materialize therefore as sites of political battles and negotiations between stakeholders, with both emancipatory but also exploitative potential. This has consequences upon our understanding of how financialization travels and how the social dynamics underpinning accounting devices (re)draw boundaries between competing values and fields. Citation: Competition & Change PubDate: 2022-04-15T06:05:39Z DOI: 10.1177/10245294221085636
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Authors:Fabio Bulfone Abstract: Competition & Change, Ahead of Print. The Great Recession renewed calls for a return of state activism in support of the European economy. The widespread nationalizations of ailing companies and the growing activism of national development banks led many to celebrate the re-appearance of industrial policy. Despite this reappraisal, however, comparative political economy (CPE) contributions to the study of industrial policy are still scarce. This review article critically overviews the existing literature linking CPE and industrial policy meeting three goals. First, to trace the evolution of the goals, protagonists, and policy instruments of industrial policy in the European Union (EU) since the post-war period. Second, to provide a periodization of the evolution of industrial policy based on the distinction between the inward-looking forms of state intervention prevalent until the late 1970s and the open-market industrial policy of later decades. Third, to outline future research pathways based on the integration between CPE, heterodox economics, and economic geography. Citation: Competition & Change PubDate: 2022-03-25T03:45:02Z DOI: 10.1177/10245294221076225
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Authors:Chen Li, Huanhuan Zheng Abstract: Competition & Change, Ahead of Print. China’s stock market experienced a major boom and bust between 2014 and 2015, with profound implications on China’s financial stability and governance reforms. Drawing on the organizational studies literature on hybrids, this article analyses how the hybridization of multiple logics has shaped the regulatory incentives, policy process and market dynamics in the evolution of China’s stock market crisis in 2015. It argues that China’s stock market governance has been trapped by the multi-task regulatory dilemma with logic volatility endogenous to its hybrid regime, which poses fundamental constraints on China’s financial stability and regulatory effectiveness. It concludes by discussing the alternative approaches of managing hybridity with integration and differentiation strategies in China’s post-crisis financial governance reforms. Citation: Competition & Change PubDate: 2022-03-02T02:23:38Z DOI: 10.1177/10245294221075530
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Authors:George Labrinidis, Duncan Lindo Abstract: Competition & Change, Ahead of Print. Between 2010 and 2015 Greek banks received capital injections as part of an EU-led rescue package that left the Greek state with large losses on their investments and a debt to repay; in the most acute moments of the crisis the European central bank twice forced the Bank of Greece to assume sole responsibility for any losses on lending to Greek banks, and; in 2015 Greek banks were subject to EU-mandated controls that restricted the transformation of Greek bank deposits into Euros in other forms. Why did European banking infrastructure leave the Greek state facing losses and liabilities alone, while still full members of the EU and Euro Area (EA)' We find that European banking infrastructure is combined-but-not-unified, and that integration requires both. Drawing on Marxist political economy we examine the financial mechanisms in detail and find a scalar split in state provision of banking infrastructure in the EU/EA. At the supranational level, the removal of barriers to cross-border banking and a common rule book. Meanwhile, promises of monetary support, such as deposit guarantees and lending of last resort have largely remained the responsibility of nation states. The combined-but-not-unified structure ensured that when crisis struck, Greece was isolated, yet still fully part of the EU/EA. Citation: Competition & Change PubDate: 2022-02-25T05:49:40Z DOI: 10.1177/10245294211060408
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Authors:Davide Monaco Abstract: Competition & Change, Ahead of Print. Over the last decade, the succession of financial crisis, neoliberal reform processes, and emergence of anti-establishment and far-right political forces has become a familiar pattern across Europe. But in few countries has it been as striking as in Italy. After the 2018 national elections, the anti-establishment Five-Star Movement (M5S) and the far-right League joined forces to form a government characterised by its rejection of past neoliberalising reforms and by its defiant stance towards European Union fiscal rules. The League’s victory in the latest European elections confirmed its ascendance and its centrality in the Italian political landscape. This article examines these developments in light of the recent trajectory of the Italian political economy and investigates whether the rise of these parties, and particularly the League, marked a break with the post-2011 neoliberalisation process. Analysis of the M5S-League government’s action indicates that these forces can further neoliberalisation processes together with a mix of anti-migration and welfare chauvinist measures. Moreover, an investigation of the political-economic project of the League shows that far-right parties can advance ‘nation-based’ neoliberalisation processes. Citation: Competition & Change PubDate: 2022-02-01T10:14:45Z DOI: 10.1177/10245294211060123
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Authors:Arpan Ganguly, Ramaa Vasudevan Abstract: Competition & Change, Ahead of Print. A distinct feature of the India’s path of financial liberalization is that it led to the emergence of the corporate, non-financial sector, rather than the financial sector as the key wedge for the penetration of global finance. Neoliberal reforms eroded the traditional role of development banks and state-directed credit and empowered a section of large corporations and non-financial companies in India. The partial, calibrated path to capital account liberalization has meant that this section of the Indian non-financial corporate sector, rather than the commercial banking system came to be the conduit integrating the Indian economy with international financial markets. Where the Indian state had earlier harnessed finance towards developmental priorities, it shifted to channeling finance in service of the internationally embedded segment of the corporate sector that enjoys disproportionate access to both the domestic financial system and international financial markets.JEL CodesE44 G32, F65 Citation: Competition & Change PubDate: 2022-01-27T09:28:56Z DOI: 10.1177/10245294211068102
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Authors:Asbjørn Karlsen, Henrik B Lund, Markus Steen Abstract: Competition & Change, Ahead of Print. Specialized clusters rely on common knowledge resources and extra-cluster linkages, but how such resources develop over time is unclear. A case in point is how extra-cluster linkages are integrated into intra-cluster networks and the role of different cluster actors in enhancing cluster absorptive capacity. The paper explores the role of cluster intermediaries in linking clusters to external knowledge sources and contributing to knowledge dissemination among cluster firms. This perspective is relevant as manufacturing firms are facing rapid changes in technology, such as those associated with ‘Industry 4.0’. Two manufacturing clusters in Norway are studied regarding cluster absorptive capacities and the role of cluster intermediaries. The authors derive two types of cluster intermediaries with different kinds of service provision well-adjusted to the firm structure. Cluster intermediaries in both cluster contexts can assist firms in tracking and adapting to rapid technological developments. Citation: Competition & Change PubDate: 2022-01-21T01:22:49Z DOI: 10.1177/10245294211059138
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Authors:Philip Balsiger, Thomas Jammet, Nicola Cianferoni, Muriel Surdez Abstract: Competition & Change, Ahead of Print. 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. Citation: Competition & Change PubDate: 2022-01-13T11:43:01Z DOI: 10.1177/10245294211055612
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Authors:Kean Birch, Callum Ward, Eliot Tretter First page: 407 Abstract: Competition & Change, Ahead of Print.
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