Introduction

The chapters in this volume were written as a collective contribution to the current debate in management and sociology on the forces shaping work practices at the local level. In contrast to the fashionable predilection for single determinant explanations, the empirical case studies in the book reveal a mix of international, national and company-level influences on action in organisations. These influences are complex and not always coherent. Furthermore, actors at the case study sites of action are shown not to be mere passive relays and responders to these influences but formative exercisers of agency. As a result, although there is change, it is not always uniform or predictable.

During the past decade or so two frameworks have dominated the debate on change within countries: globalisation and comparative (or varieties of) capitalism. In one there is a persistence of differences through the local embedding of each ‘capitalist’ experience, while in the other there is a tendency for that experience to become a common one. This book recognises variation, rivalry and conflict, both beyond and within national territories. At the same time, it judges capitalism as never quite settling into any one national costume, but as possessing ‘natural’ or systemic features that constantly undermine such territorial constraints, while nevertheless not operating completely outside such constraints. In other words, there is fluidity and contradiction within a political economy that has inherent global reach, but in the practical experience of actors is always located or uneasily resident within a particular set of local rules and practices.