Gordon L. Clark

Costs and Prices, Corporate Competitive Strategies and Regions

This paper makes a number of contributions to our understanding of industrial restructuring and regional adjustment. A distinction is made between restructuring and economic growth and development, with the author arguing that restructuring is more than autonomous economic change; it is a process of deliberate or planned structural reconfiguration. An analytical framework is used to understand the logic of restructuring from the vantage point of the competitive strategies of firms; how firms plan their market strategies given the nature and costs of production, market prices, and the temporal pattern of economic events. The author is also very much concerned with understanding the role of regions in restructuring, moving from the spatial impacts of restructuring through to an understanding of why regions have a significant role in shaping the design and implementation of restructuring, and then to an appreciation of the increasing status of regions in the competitive strategies of corporations. Throughout, reference is made to the experience of North America. In conclusion, however, some observations are made about the relevance of this framework to other countries.

Piercing the Corporate Veil: The Closure of Wisconsin Steel in South Chicago

CLARK G. L. (1990) Piercing the corporate veil: the closure of Wisconsin Steel in South Chicago, Reg. Studies 24, 405–420. Restructuring is usually associated with technological change, the transformation of the workplace, and the communities affected by cross-plant capacity rationalization. However restructuring should also be understood as a corporate strategy – specifically the actions of management to protect and foster their core economic interests while limiting the costs of adjustment by shifting those costs to others. A case study of International Harvester Companys restructuring strategy which led to bankruptcy and closure of Wisconsin Steel in South Chicago in the early 1980s is the basis of the paper. The significance of plant-closing pension liabilities in corporate restructuring is emphasized, as is the regulation of restructuring with respect to those liabilities by the United States federal governments Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Analytically, the case is interpreted, in part, a...

THE LEGITIMACY OF JUDICIAL DECISION MAKING IN THE CONTEXT OF RICHMOND v. CROSON

The public profile of the U.S. Supreme Court has rarely been as high as it is now. The replacement of retiring judges with Republican-nominated conservatives over the past decade combined with a series of contentious decisions regarding minority rights and affirmative action in the nations cities have again raised doubts about the legitimacy of the Court. With respect to the Courts recent decision in City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., this paper considers the theoretical logic behind three strategies of legitimization: (1) the idealization of law as a political institution; (2) the idealization of law as a superior mode of reasoning; and (3) the idealization of law as an ethical blueprint for society. Understanding the logic and limits of these strategies in the context of urban racial justice is the goal of this paper. In doing so, however, it is argued that all three strategies make too powerful claims about the theoretical virtues of their approaches to the law. Notwithstanding the virtues of theor...

Compensation for Workers Adversely Affected by Corporate Restructuring: Pension Rights, the Law and Public Policy

CLARK G. L. (1993) Compensation for workers adversely affected by corporate restructuring: pension rights, the law and public policy, Reg. Studies 27, 541–560. The costs of restructuring to corporations can be enormous. So too can be the costs of restructuring for workers and communities, layoffs, plant closings, and long-term unemployment are often the consequences of restructuring. Normally, those adversely affected by restructuring are not due any compensation other than short-term unemployment benefits. But in instances where corporations have illegally sought to shift the costs of restructuring to workers by selectively denying them their pension and benefit rights, US federal courts have held that compensation is possible. The question is, however, what is appropriate compensation, given legal entitlements and abstract theoretical notions of just compensation? This question is explored with reference to case studies of corporate restructuring in the US that have involved identified violations of the...

Unions and Communities under Siege: American Communities and the Crisis of Organized Labor.

List of tables Preface Acknowledgments Part I. Economy and Community: 1. Crisis of organized labor 2. Understanding union growth and decline Part II. Drama of Economic Restructuring: 3. Communities and corporate location strategies 4. Rationing jobs within the union, between communities Part III. Union Performance in Representation Elections: 5. Democracy in the guise of representation elections 6. Organizing strategies in the heartland and the South 7. At the margin of the rules of the game Part IV. Regulating Local Labor-Management Relations: 8. Integrity of the National Labor Relations Board 9. Options for restructuring the US economy Part V. Prospects For Organized Labor: 10. Republicans, democrats, and the southern veto 11. Employment contracts without unions 12. Unions and communities unarmed Appendices Notes Bibliography Indexes.