Nuno Teles

The motives for cooperation in work organizations

This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of cooperation in productive ventures, conceived of as collective action endeavours that require cooperation rather than mere coordination. It is argued that cooperative behaviour is grounded on three kinds of ‘common goods’, defined as goods that are shared and recognized as beneficial by the workers. These comprise common goals, relational satisfaction, and moral norms and values. The commonly held goods are associated with motives and behavioural rules which constitute both the reasons for cooperating and the means through which the dilemmatic nature of cooperation is overcome. It is further argued that the binding character of these rules is closely linked to humans’ ability and opportunity to communicate. Normative guidelines relative to management practices and directions for future research are also derived.

Semi-peripheral financialisation: the case of Portugal

ABSTRACT This paper presents the main features of the financialisation of the Portuguese economy and society by focusing on the relation between the Portuguese financial sector and both external and domestic economic agents. It underlines the role played by the insertion of domestic finance into international financial markets in the financialisation of the country. Based on the Portuguese case, it elaborates on the theoretical understanding of the context-specific nature of semi-peripheral financialisation aimed as a contribution to an emerging body of literature addressing this phase of capitalism.

Financialisation of pensions in semi-peripheral Portugal

This article aims at contributing to the literature on the financialisation of pensions in Europe by examining the transformations occurring in semi-peripheral Portugal. The Portuguese case accounts for the variegated nature of financialisation in general, and of pension provision in particular, throughout Europe. While the country followed similar processes to those of core European Union (EU) countries, leading to an increasingly integrated financial sector in the international arena, this integration was mainly led by the banking sector rather than by capital markets. This helps account for the relatively reduced role of private retirement income products in the country. Nonetheless, the Portuguese pension system has been equally subject to reform, aiming at reducing its weight in public expenditure. The result is a contraction in coverage and benefit without achieving an equivalent match in supplementary private forms of pension provision. Under a prolonged period of stagnation and crisis, the deterioration of State pensions for the majority continues while a residual private, outward-oriented and foreign-owned pension sector grows for the most affluent, further exposing the systemic and variegated nature of financialisation processes in the semi-periphery.