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.

These chapters are structured around a notion of ‘system’ as developed in the system, society and dominance framework (see chapter 2). This notion of ‘system’ does not follow Niklas Luhmann's definition of system as ‘a single mode of operation’ (2006: 37), nor is it tautological in the sense that ‘a system is difference – the difference between system and environment’ (38). Rather, it is used here to mean specifically a system of political economy – capitalism – that is ‘a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail’ (Wittgenstein, 1953: 66).

Each of the three countries in which the chapter's studies are located – the Czech Republic, China and Turkey – have recognisably moved towards, or have extended their commitment to, the ‘system’ of capitalism, but there remain differences both within and between these countries. Moreover, what they are becoming differs – though not completely – from what they were. There is historical dependency, but not as the causal determinism of prior conditions. Change is mixed and uneven. For instance, even when the Czech Republic was a ‘socialist’ economy, there were capitalist activities, albeit on a much smaller scale. Now that it is a capitalist economy the power of capital is not unregulated. Anthony Giddens's advocacy of ‘the third way’ supposes that the two alternatives are pure forms. They never were.

The three chapters in this section offer a commentary on and an alternative account to theories of internationalisation that stress either unrelenting globalisation, or the resilience of national management patterns and actions or a division of the world into fixed varieties of capitalism, effectively constructed with more or less market and state. All three offer a critique of claims for an enduring and nationally uniform business practice. In anticipation of empirical chapters that reveal a within-country change and diversity at odds with notions of unchanging national homogeneity, the three demonstrate the significance of endogenous (and not just exogenous) sources of change – a possibility inconceivable within variety of capitalism and national business system perspectives. They stress the remaking of management as a more dynamic, recurrent and variable practice, reflecting the fact that the integration of firms and national territories is more fluid and diverse than suggested by national business system approaches.

Chapter 2 outlines different approaches to the internationalisation of business and implications for management action within the firm, and suggests an alternative framework for thinking about and researching these processes. Three theories are reviewed: globalisation, national business systems and varieties of capitalism. This is followed by an exposition of the system, society and dominance framework that the book is informed by.

Globalisation implies a convergence of action around one set of best or standard efficiency practices, which are diffused through the market, technology and multinational agencies and which place all national or local models of action under intense competitive pressure.

Introduction

Are workplace practices shaped by national context? Are those practices embedded, inflexible, path-dependent? Is there a national path? Is there a single ‘best fit’ between practices and specific national contexts? Norbert Elias observes that ‘[s]ocial norms are often discussed in a manner which suggests that the norms of one and the same society are all of a piece’ (1996: 158). Belief in such uniformity is the bedrock of the notion of enduring and determining national culture popular in the management literature (Oyserman, Coon and Kemmelmeier, 2002; Søndergaard, 1994). In contrast to national homogeneity claims, however, Elias argues that ‘[i]n societies above a specific level of differentiation, inherently contradictory codes of norms can co-exist in varying degrees of amalgamation and separation. Each may be activated in different situations and at different times.’

In line with Elias's view, and against the image of static mono-national cultures, the existence of dynamic cultural diversity within countries is argued for in this chapter. It does so through a rereading of the national cultural literature itself against a backdrop of contrary data. An analysis of the key categories and claims in the national culture literature and of its reliance on discarded concepts from other disciplines shows that it inappropriately represents national heterogeneity as homogeneity. It spreads, as Maurice Farber says, a ‘homogeneous semantic veneer over the cracks in the social structure of nations’ (1950: 311).