Gerhard Schnyder

Strategic responses to global challenges: The case of European banking, 1973–2000

In applying a strategy, structure, ownership and performance (SSOP) framework to three major clearing banks (ABN AMRO, UBS, Barclays), this article debates whether the conclusions generated by Whittington and Mayer about European manufacturing industry can be applied to the financial services sector. While European integration plays a key role in determining strategy, it is clear that global factors were far more important in determining management actions, leading to significant differences in structural adaptation. The article also debates whether this has led to improved performance, given the problems experienced with both geographical dispersion and diversification, bringing into question the quality of decision-making over the long term.

Like a phoenix from the ashes? Reassessing the transformation of the Swedish political economy since the 1970s

This contribution reassesses the evolution of the Swedish model since the 1970s across different institutional spheres. It addresses two questions. Firstly, why did a system that was based on strong complementarities undergo such extensive changes? Secondly, what explains Swedens recent return to strong social and economic performance? The decline of the Swedish model is explained by the endogenous nature of change, which was sparked off by ‘normative dissonances’ that led actors to ‘defect’ from crucial institutions, leading to knock-on effects on other spheres through changing political strategies and macro-level political coalitions. It is further argued that the new complementarities that have emerged after 1995, while providing new sectors with institutional advantages, also contain sources of normative dissonances, which make the long-term viability of the ‘new model’ doubtful.

Ordoliberal Lessons for Economic Stability: Different Kinds of Regulation, Not More Regulation

Since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 the term “ordoliberalism” has experienced a marked revival. This discussion tends to focus on the need for more state intervention. Yet this misrepresents the core ideas of ordoliberalism because its main concern is not with “how much” but with “what kind of” intervention is needed. Thus, this article seeks to clarify the ordoliberal position, in particular its key distinction between market conforming and nonconforming state intervention. Discussing the current financial crisis, it also evaluates the potential benefits and drawbacks of ordoliberalism. The article rebukes rhetorical shortcuts that equate every economic policy coming out of Germany with ordoliberalism. It also suggests that while the ordoliberal conception does not necessarily provide a solution to the current problems in the short run, in the long run it may form the basis for a sounder conception of economic regulation than more libertarian views can offer.

Revisiting the Party Paradox of Finance Capitalism: Social Democratic Preferences and Corporate Governance Reforms in Switzerland, Sweden, and the Netherlands

The “party paradox” thesis claims that in the context of the legal corporate governance reforms of the 1990s, which aimed at adjusting national corporate governance systems to the “finance capitalism” of the Anglo-American type, center-left parties promoted proshareholder corporate governance reforms, whereas center-right parties opposed such reforms. Based on case studies of Switzerland, Sweden, and the Netherlands, this article shows that this thesis does not apply to two of these cases: In Sweden and the Netherlands a broad coalition uniting center-right and center-left parties opposed— with considerable success—proshareholder reforms. Therefore, the author argues that firm-level explanations of the “party paradox” are insufficient to understand the variance in center-left preferences across different cases. Instead, the historical role of labor in different countries is critical in the formation of center-left preferences. Where labor was not excluded from the formation of corporate governance structures, center-left support for proshareholder reform was weak.

More Teeth Needed for Corporate Governance Reforms: Response to the Dept. BEIS Green Paper on Corporate Governance Reform

In our response, ‘More Teeth Needed for Corporate Governance Reforms’, to the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Green Paper on Corporate Governance Reform we propose an eight point reform agenda which aims in the direction of giving the existing and/or reformed corporate governance system more teeth.

Is there a global small world of owners and directors

This chapter investigates whether a global small world of business owners and corporate directors exists. It evaluates the descriptive power of the tools of the new science of networks to understand governance networks and examines how corporate control had changed in the 1990s and to whose advantage. The findings indicate that the global transnational graph is still strongly structured by national governance networks and that owners and directors are strongly connected to their national markets but loosely connected to other national governance networks.

Improving the Micro-Foundations of Actor-Centered Institutionalism

Institutionalist scholarship in political science has increasingly underscored the importance of agency in processes of institutional reproduction and change. This increasing “actor-centeredness” has so far not led to the development of a coherent theory of individual action that enables us to explain processes whereby shifts in logics of action occur and contribute to broader institutional processes. In this paper we present Goal Framing Theory (GFT) as a powerful theoretical tool in order to cover this gap. GFT provides a theory of goal-oriented action that explains not only how various logics of action coexist at the individual level, but also how they interact to influence actors’ behavior. Based on two empirical examples – patient capital in France and Germany, and foreign ownership of corporate stocks in Switzerland –, we show that GFT has the potential to provide a behavioral foundation for processes of institutional reproduction and change that are the result of shifts of logics of action.