Maria L. Aldred

Varieties of Capitalism, Governance, and High-Tech Export Performance: A Fuzzy-Set Analysis of the New EU Member States

Purpose – This paper aims to assess the extent to which convergence in institutional regimes is likely to occur, by examining all ten new EU member states in Central and Eastern Europe in terms of their development of comparative advantages in high‐tech export markets either by drawing on foreign investors in the form of multinational companies or by making use of domestic institutional resources.Design/methodology/approach – The article uses fuzzy sets and qualitative comparative analysis to examine both necessary and sufficient causes of success in high‐tech export markets. By doing so, it can address the important issue of institutional complementarity.Findings – While it finds that countries that have stronger records in such markets share common features, there are also important differences between them – not least in the areas of employee relations. This, together with other evidence presented in the paper, suggests that convergence around a specific institutional model is unlikely to happen.Origin...

Business regulation, inward foreign direct investment, and economic growth in the new European Union member states

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent to which institutional convergence has taken place in the new European Union (EU) member states. It does so by contrasting arguments that are inspired by transaction‐cost economics within the mainstream international‐business literature and contentions within the comparative‐capitalisms perspective. A corollary of arguments within the former is that those countries that have less transparent ways of doing business will post poorer economic growth records than those with more predictable and less costly regulations. By contrast, contentions within the comparative‐capitalisms literature lead to expectations that a broader set of institutional factors will shape economic growth.Design/methodology/approach – The article adopts a fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis approach to examine the necessary and sufficient causal conditions for economic growth in the region.Findings – There is a great deal of institutional diversity within the new EU mem...

Institutional frameworks and radical innovation: an analysis of high- and medium-high-technology industries in Germany

Radical innovation is increasingly becoming the focus of attention of both policy makers and senior corporate managers. However, debates within the varieties of capitalism literature on the ease with which radical innovation can be achieved within less de-regulated economies, such as Germany, have tended to focus on the pharmaceutical industry. This article demonstrates that attempts to assess the extent to which the socio-economic institutions typically associated with Germany support radical innovation should be broadened to cover other sectors besides the pharmaceutical industry, as the distinctiveness of that sector has yet to be firmly established. This article proposes theoretical reasons to suggest that the pharmaceutical industry may not be as distinct, in terms of radical innovation, from other sectors as it is often implicitly assumed to be. These arguments are assessed using the large-scale, representative survey data. This paper opens up new areas that can be explored in future research. The core finding is that pharmaceutical firms are not statistically more likely to introduce radical innovations compared to those in many other high-technology and medium-high-technology industries. In addition, works councils and sectoral collective agreements do not hinder the development of new technologies. Both of these findings have important public-policy implications.

Internationalization, Institutions and Economic Growth: A Fuzzy-Set Analysis of the New EU Member States

Expertly written by leading scholars from a range of different starting points, this compendium presents a synthesis of recent work relating to institutionally-informed accounts from transitional and emerging markets, as well as from mature economies. It specifically focuses on the linkage between institutions and what goes on inside firms, and the relationship between setting, strategic choice and systemic outcomes.