Corporate Conglomerates Research Articles

Introspecting food movements in Canada: Unpacking tensions towards justice and sustainability

Over the past decades there has been a notable growth in community-based food systems projects and successes. Despite these advancements, food insecurity, precarious food work, ecological degradation, and corporate conglomeration in the food sector all continue to increase, compounded by the ongoing impacts of white supremacy, patriarchy, settler colonialism. Recognizing these growing inequities, critical scholars have noted that too many food systems initiatives are overly concerned with influencing individual behaviours and a focus on narrow objectives. Furthermore, many approaches tend to overlook ways that food systems are embedded within political and economic structures that constrain their goals of social and environmental justice. These multiple challenges suggest that food movements are at a crossroads. This paper reflects on this pivotal moment through an analysis of key food movement actor’s perspectives on the progress and promises as well as emerging tensions for food movements in Canada. Through a series of interviews with individuals most prominent in food movement spaces, we explore key perspectives on the state of food movements and possibilities for future directions. Our findings paint a complex and nuanced portrait of what food movements have accomplished, tease out internal tensions, and identify questions facing their future prospects. The perspectives presented through our findings offer a path to transcend the critiques that position short-term strategic gains in opposition to longer-term systemic change. We suggest that food movements can overcome these challenges by embracing a more radical and expansive vision of social and environmental justice that is deeply embedded within food systems while also looking beyond them.

SigmaTel: Adoption of distributor management system

The SigmaTel case deals with sales and distribution, channel management, and technology adoption issues. SigmaTel, part of a large and diversified corporate conglomerate, is the largest telecom operator in India. It entered a highly competitive market and quickly rose to the top spot on the back of cheap data and call rates and a strong 4G network. The case is set in 2021 when the company implements Distributor Management System (DMS)—a technology solution to streamline distributor operations. The primary decision point that the case protagonist, Sanjay Prakash, Head of Sales at SigmaTel, Delhi, faces is how to proceed in light of unexpected challenges that the initiative is facing. Should he recommend that SigmaTel proceed with the rollout? If yes, then how does he overcome distributor resistance and conflict? Failure to adopt DMS can impact the strategic business goals of SigmaTel.

Is it China’s Lehman Brothers moment? Unveiling Evergrande debt crisis, financial risks, and regulatory implications

ABSTRACT The ongoing Evergrande debt crisis has been widely dubbed as China’s Lehman Brothers moment as the Chinese corporate conglomerate failed to pay interest on its corporate debt worth £228bn. The case of Evergrande reflects the tightly intertwined links between financial markets and the real economy as well as the fragile balance between financial stability and economic growth that policymakers often find difficult to strike. It also exposes the interconnections between financial stability and investor protection and the multifaceted nature of investors both on-shore and off-shore ranging from global banks and asset managers to vulnerable consumers who have spent their lifesaving in pre-sale purchases. The combination of these unique features provides a fruitful ground for exploring the legal and regulatory challenges, in particular with regard to the protection of domestic and offshore financial investors, monitoring risks to financial stability in China and potential spillover effects.

How Cutting-Edge 21st. Century Tech Giants Are “Crushing It” Simultaneously Pulverizing and Diminishing Start-Up and Small Business Innovation

Now more than ever, innovation that leads to the creation of jobs is key to reverse the hostile and ongoing takeover by Tech Giants to provide opportunity for mom & pop stores, start-ups and small businesses to survive and thrive. From ‘idea to profitable reality’ appears impossible for 95% of all start-ups due to the domination of corporate conglomerates, and statistics show that only 5% ever reach $1 million in sales over the course of one year. Moreover, lack of funding from investors and or insufficient access to capital from banks or other financial institutions have resulted in the demise of innovations and entrepreneurship. Life as we all know and experience every day, is the result of trailblazers and those individuals who were willing to 'bet the farm', resulting in progress for humanity in the form of a huge variety of colorful, fun, functional products and services. What we need today is more ideas, inventions and innovation.

News Work: The Impact of Corporate-implemented Technology on Local Television Newsroom Labor

ABSTRACT By virtue of their licenses, local television stations in the United States must serve in the public interest of their communities. Because many stations’ ownership is by corporate conglomerates, however, that public interest is often considered secondary to revenue maximization. Labor is exploited to meet this goal, with technology deployed in newsrooms to consolidate job descriptions, replace human labor with computers, and add sales-ready content platforms, while drawing as much surplus value from workers as possible. This study sought out newsroom employees, including rarely-studied behind the scenes personnel, in the 25 largest metropolitan areas of the country to find out how this utilization of technology affected their journalistic work routines and output. Their responses via online surveys and semi-structured interviews highlight the challenges of juggling ever-increasing tech-enabled job responsibilities while still providing quality reports for their audiences in a corporate ownership environment focused on profits.

Larsen & Toubro Infotech’s Hostile Bid for Mindtree Ltd.: Much Ado About Nothing! A Teaching Case

This article tries to understand and analyse the recent acquisition of Mindtree Ltd. by the corporate conglomerate giant Larsen & Toubro (L&T). L&T Infotech (LTI), which looks after the information technology (IT) business of the L&T group made a hostile bid for Mindtree Ltd., one of India’s leading and fastest growing infotech companies in March 2019. The case goes on to analyse the deal and delves into the reasons for the deal turning hostile. The objective of the case study is to understand the concept of hostile takeovers and the business environment that augur acquisitions. The second part of the article tries to focus on anti-takeover tactics, which the company adopts to avoid the takeover attempt. Here, Mindtree’s decision of share buyback, immediately after L&T’s bid, has been examined. Two perspectives have been studied here—one from the point of view of the promoters of Mindtree, and the other from the point of view of investors. There have been certain very interesting and jocular exchanges of words between the promoters of Mindtree and LTI1 during the whole phase of takeover, which put the focus on the human element in acquisitions. The business environment and industry analysis have been conducted to understand the nature and circumstances of the deal. Legalities of the acquisition and dominant player misuse have also been examined. LTI’s take on the acquisition was very clear. For them, it was a pure business deal. They were on the path for fast growth, which Mindtree would help them achieve. Certain sectors such as Retail, Consumer Packaged goods, Media and Technology are underachieved for LTI where Mindtree has a formidable presence. Mindtree would help LTI explore geographies in Europe that so far were unexplored. However, for the promoters of Mindtree, this bid for takeover became an emotional issue. It all started when one of the non-executive directors of Mindtree itself—V. G. Siddharth—came up to LTI and offered his shareholding of 21 per cent in Mindtree. LTI grabbed this offer and went on to announce that it would acquire a total of about 60 per cent in the company, which made the other promoters very uncomfortable. There was a lot of resistance from some of the Mindtree promoters, and certain hasty announcements and statements in the media were also made. This interesting interlude between the two companies brought a lot of attention to the acquisition and left the investors in a state of confusion. The main objective of the case will be to analyse and teach the different corporate actions which took place and the strategic decisions that were taken during the entire interaction between the two companies. This case would address teaching objectives for the topics such as hostile takeovers; share buybacks as a new approach to anti-takeover defence; political, legal and industrial analysis relevant to corporate restructuring decisions; and Hubris and Managerialism. A separate teaching perspective on Corporate Business Communication has also been explored.

The Discourse and Value of Being an Independent Publisher

Publishing did not haveindependentsenter self-discourse until the 1960s when media conglomeration created a need to distinguish other publishers from this network of corporate giants. But rather than decimating the independent publishing landscape, the corporate conglomeration of book publishing has opened a space for independent publishers to thrive (Simon and McCarthy, 2009; Schiffrin, 2001; Hawthorne, 2014, 2016; Kogan 2007, 2010), in part because of the social currency that positioning themselves as independent in discourse affords. In order to analyze the use, purpose, and meaning ofindependentin publisher discourse, this article conducts a content analysis on mission statements of 39 US-based independent publishers. Through content analysis of mission statements, this article illuminates the way that certain publishers construct a particular social function and marketing appeal by the use ofindependentin twenty-first century book publishing discourse in the US.

A bilateral monopsony approach to lending, and the hidden economy in LDCs

Under developing-economy circumstances of small and mainly informal firms and a few official corporate conglomerates, an investigation of the developmental role of banking in such economies might be pursued analytically within the context of a bilateral monopsony for loans. Assuming away wage differences and trade between formal and informal sectors, a model is presented in which one firm borrows from one bank with a positive supply curve of loans. The bank monitors firm’s output, which firm produces output underground too, in order to avoid this monitoring and minimize its marginal expenditure on loans by defaulting. The model incorporates also a laborer-consumer who allocates labor between the formal and informal sectors in a way preserving full employment. In this model, the following results obtain: There cannot be underground only economy even in the absence of government national-accounting induced output monitoring once part at least of the output has to be monitored by the bank. The capital employed officially is always more than that underground. Bank monopoly power induces lexicographic preferences towards underground economy income. The stability of the system depends on the relative size of the official to total capital ratio and the response of loan demand to the interest rate. The introduction of government and indirect taxation alter the optimal official to total capital ratio. Yet, the steady-state and stability of the system remain unchanged under a tax financed balanced budget. Government borrowing by a rent-seeking government or to cope with tax-evasion induced budget deficits lowers lending to the firm and leads thereby the system to equilibrium away from steady-state; but tax evasion increases such lending towards steady-state restoration. It is clear that the approach to development leading to these conclusions focuses not on development per se but on how it is shaped based on overt and covert resources and capabilities financed by concentrated banking. The mentality underlying such an approach abides by Hirschman’s (1965) view of development rather than macroeconomic growth. Policy-wise, international trade and foreign direct investment should be encouraging the official economy at the expense of the unofficial one. Also, government borrowing from abroad is expected to be sooner or later recessionary if the money is not channeled to public investment. Special attention should be paid to the design of trade liberalization towards (i) the implementation of non-inflationary government finance means compensating for the subsequent loss of tariffs, and (ii) discouraging the profit shifting by multinationals abroad.

Practicing Institutional Feelings: A Roundtable

Practicing Institutional Feelings:A Roundtable Katie Bashore, Heather Berg, James Bliss, Kellie Cauley, Emerald Christopher-Byrd, Ayla Engelhart, Adrian Hernandez-Acosta, Lucia Hulsether, Stephen Molldrem, Sandy Placido, Mairead Sullivan, Christina Siobhan Wells, and Lindsey Whitmore Part 1 Many scholars deploy the term corporate university to describe a set of shifts within higher education, including the ubiquity of market logics and outcomes assessment in administration, the mounting student-debt crisis, the growth of adjunct labor, the ethic of market-driven learning, and the branding of the university. Indeed, many argue that the corporatization of the university disproportionately affects fields like women’s studies that are already precariously situated in the university. As many feminist and queer scholars critique the corporate university, women’s studies has created its own institutional forms (including graduate certificates, master’s programs, and PhD programs) and has an institutional life that includes the circulation of feminist analytics (for example, intersectionality, transnational, and others) outside of women’s studies. How, if at all, does this paradox shape your research, teaching, job-market approaches, and experiences? If you were to provide a critical ethnography and/or speak from your particular institutional location, what does corporatization—if this is indeed the correct term—mean for the daily practices of feminist research and pedagogy? How do women’s studies institutional form(s) shape your investments in the field itself? Mairead Sullivan: When I tell people that I am working on a doctorate in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies (WGSS), the most frequent question I get is: What will you do with that? Although at family holidays, recently the question has turned to: When will you be done with that? I hear within these questions a number of the challenges we currently face as the language and culture of the university shifts to that of a corporate conglomerate. Degrees, [End Page 217] whether undergraduate or advanced, are viewed as a means to an end, a necessary tick-mark in a series of credentials that bear the true worth. It is difficult to explain to friends and family outside of the academy that—to invoke a popular cliché—the journey is in fact more important than the destination. I feel my anxiety and defensiveness rise as I make the case for my work in academia, or as I explain the funding structures of PhD programs and the intricacies of the academic job market. These concerns and discomforts are not mine alone. As I mentor undergraduate WGSS majors I have found that their own hesitations echo the questions above: What kind of job can I get with this degree? Although much ink has been spilled over the value of the liberal arts and on the shifting of the college experience from that of a holistic education to a specialized degree (perhaps with the value-added branding of a major university), I think such conversations beg to be considered in these pages. How does WGSS fit into this mix? I am less interested in how we justify WGSS in its institutional forms than in how we support and encourage our students and one another in the face of this demand to brand, market, and sell our intellectual pursuits. Heather Berg: Corporatization, for me, does not fully communicate the state of the contemporary university. Much as neoliberalism and globalization can be used to describe the violence of late capitalism without naming capital, explaining the university’s captivity by market logics with the language of corporatization misses what is most toxic and ordinary about this mode of organizing labor and learning. Increased reliance upon casualized labor, complicity in the student-debt crisis, crudely tethering learning to market demands, and so forth are not unique to the corporation, but are rather endemic to the political economy of late capitalism. Much of what is so extractive about academic labor is more in league with the conditions of nonprofit and creative work than corporate, white-collar work. The university has long relied on “higher calling” discourses that compel workers to do more for less; murky boundaries between work and nonwork time, life, and space; and union-busting under the guise of concern for students, to name a few examples...

The Korean economy: from a miraculous past to a sustainable future

South Korea has been held out as an economic miracle as a country that successfully completed the transition from underdeveloped to developed country status and as an example of how a middle-income country can continue to move up the technology ladder into the production and export of more sophisticated goods and services. But with these successes have come challenges, among them poverty, inequality, long work hours, financial instability, and complaints about the economic and political power of the country s large corporate conglomerates, or chaebol.The Korean Economy provides an overview of Korean economic experience since the 1950s, with a focus on the period since democratization in 1987. Successive chapters analyze the Korean experience from the perspectives of political economy, the growth record, industrial organization and corporate governance, financial development and instability, labor and employment, inequality and social policy, and Korea s place in the world economy. A concluding chapter describes the country s economic challenges going forward and how they can best be met. The volume also serves to summarize the findings of companion volumes in the Harvard-Korean Development Institute series on the Korean economy, also published by the Harvard University Asia Center.

A Tale of Two Families: Generational Succession in Filipino and American Family Firms

AbstractThrough comparison of two families, Filipino and American, this essay finds that the axiomatic three-generational cycle of rise and decline, articulated famously by Andrew Carnegie, proved predictive for an American family firm but not for its Filipino counterpart. Over the span of a century, both families followed a surprisingly similar move from agriculture to food processing and then publishing. Thereafter, however, divergent state policies shaped different destinies for these two families. In the United States, impersonal enforcement of state security and economic regulation allowed the unchecked rise of finance capital that consolidated some 2000 US breweries, most of them family owned, into two transnational corporate conglomerates. In the Philippines, by contrast, persistent rent seeking by elite families, combined with personalised, partisan state economic enforcement, has allowed the continuing dominance of family-controlled corporations. Through comparison of two societies with close relations for over a century, we can see how state economic regulation can encourage the eclipse of major family firms in one society and the perpetuation of a political-economic oligarchy in another.

Personal Jurisdiction and Corporate Groups: DaimlerChrysler AG v. Bauman

Large firms are often organized into corporate groups or conglomerates. Disputes, however, are frequently adjudicated by courts that have jurisdiction over only some components of that group. The U.S. Supreme Court’s upcoming decision in DaimlerChrysler AG v. Bauman potentially addresses this tension between multinational corporate groups and court jurisdiction. The case involves Argentine plaintiffs who sued a German corporation in the United States, alleging violations of the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victims Protection Act. The question before the U.S. Supreme Court, however, is the scope of personal jurisdiction over non-resident defendants. This article proposes a framework for understanding what is at stake in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision. The consequences of the decision depend on how the Court analyzes three aspects of personal jurisdiction. The first is the extent to which a subsidiary’s contacts with a forum state can be imputed to the corporate parent. The second is so-called “general” jurisdiction – whether the contacts are so extensive that the court may exercise personal jurisdiction over a defendant for any cause of action, even one unrelated to the contacts. The third is whether jurisdiction would be “reasonable,” which requires courts to apply a discretionary multifactor analysis. Ultimately, the opinion is unlikely to resolve either the scope of the underlying statutes (especially the Alien Tort Claims Act) or, given early concessions by the litigants, the extent of contacts required to establish general jurisdiction. Instead, it provides an opportunity to develop much needed guidance about jurisdictional attribution in the context of corporate groups, or to serve as another example of a discretionary, policy-driven analysis of the reasonableness of jurisdiction in the context of multinational businesses.

Growth Opportunities for the American Worker: Hottest Growth Industries by Decade 1890-2020

Manufacturing. Energy. Agriculture. In 1900, these were the industries of a still-young nation establishing itself as an emerging world power. Today, a century of accumulated innovation is creating new pathways of industrial advancement that would have been impossible to imagine a century ago. These industries are re-emerging in new forms, leading a transformation of the American economy. This report seeks insight into the next decade of America’s economic evolution by revisiting 10 prior decades of industrial change. Taken together, the data-derived vignettes in this report tell the story of a nation’s ascent—despite a Great Depression and two world wars—and o er glimpses of some of the thousands of innovations that, cumulatively, made such an ascent possible. More than anything, the 20th century was about the rise and partial fall of production at scale. From the 1910s to the 1970s, one industry after another went from small and decentralized to large and concentrated. Craftsmanship yielded to machinery, and tinkering gave way to managerial e ciency. By the 1980s, however, investors began to lose interest in corporate conglomerates. America’s culture of entrepreneurship reasserted itself. A revolution in information and communications technologies swept through one industry after another. A surge in globalized exchange disrupted industrial practices of the middle of the century. The recent recession has done little to alter the arc of history, and future pathways of progress appear to be following the same trajectory as the country’s previous industrial ascent. Today, the United States is 4 times more populous and more than 30 times more prosperous than it was a century ago, and patterns of industrial evolution point to a period of large-scale economic renewal.

What Does Fortune 500 Turnover Mean?

In The Princess Bride, the lead kidnapper, Vizzini, dismisses missteps in his ill-fated scheme with a frustrated exclamation, “Inconceivable!” At length, his soft-spoken mercenary, Inigo Montoya, ventures: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” An equivalent asymmetry in the world of economic analysis is the use of turnover on the Fortune 500 list. For years, many people have cited turnover — and ostensibly rising turnover — as a proxy for positive economic churn and rapid changes in the U.S. economy that are supposed to reflect underlying strengths in innovation and productivity. We find that, while annual turnover on the list has, on average, increased since the early 1980s, it doesn’t quite mean what many people think it means. On average, annual turnover (the number of spots on the list that change as companies enter and exit the top 500) was moderate in the late 1950s, then lower and steadier through the 1960s and 1970s. Beginning in the early 1980s, annual turnover rose to historically high levels; by the second half of the 1990s, it touched new highs. After 2000, however, turnover returned to the moderate levels of the late 1950s. It’s easy to paint a narrative around these numbers that coincides with the Great Moderation and the productivity revolution of the 1990s and early 2000s. But reality isn’t so simple. For one thing, turnover among big companies is not a new phenomenon. The late 1950s, as mentioned, experienced moderately high levels of turnover (at least compared to subsequent periods). Prior research has revealed considerable churn among big companies in the early decades of the twentieth century as well. Higher turnover in the 1980s did appear to reflect value creation as corporate conglomerates, ravaged by inflation and competition, were taken apart and remade into separate, more efficient companies. But, in the 1990s, higher turnover reflected (a) methodological changes in how the Fortune list was compiled, and (b) a mergers and acquisition boom, concentrated in a handful of sectors, that destroyed perhaps as much value as it created. Turnover is less a broad economic trend than a discrete temporal and sectoral phenomenon. Still, we point out that the Fortune 500 list — and its changes over time — does provide a meaningful window into American capitalism, even if it doesn’t mean what many think it means. It reflects a kaleidoscopic process of sectoral change and greater efficiencies at the level of individual firms, as well as some less sanguine economic developments. The latter includes the downside of higher volatility — the high M&A volume in the late 1990s included the largest number of the worst deals of the past thirty years — and the deleterious implications for consumers and households. Finally, it appears as if performance among the Fortune 500, as measured by return on equity, did not necessarily improve and, if anything, became more volatile over time.

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE PRACTICES, SHARE OWNERSHIP STRUCTURE, AND SIZE ON EARNING MANAGEMENT

This study tries to analyze the effect of corporate governance practices, ownership, and firmsize on the amount of earnings management. It was conducted in the companies listed in IndonesiaStock Exchange. Ownership structure can be divided into institutional ownershipand family ownership, firm size which were measured by market capitalization. The corporategovernance practices were measured using three variables (quality audit, the proportionof independent board, and the existence of audit committee). Multiple-regression was employedfor analysis with the empirical data from 117 samples of manufacturing companieslisted in the Indonesia Stock Exchange. It was found that company size and family ownershiphave a significant influence on the amount of earnings management. The larger the company,the smaller management is on average earnings and earnings management in the firms withhigh family ownership. Those that are not a corporate conglomerate are higher than averageearnings in the management of other companies. The practice of corporate governance andinstitutional ownership variable did not have significant effect on the amount of profit madeby company management.

General Electric at the crossroads: the end of the last US conglomerate?

In 2000, General Electric (GE) was the world’s most valuable company, with a market capitalisation of $520 billion. At the end of 2008, GE’s market capitalisation had fallen 69% to $163 billion. This paper analyses first the direct causes of the decline, and then the longer-term root causes, which are attributed to the mismatch and dissonance between GE’s present leadership, strategy and structure and the continuing crisis environment. We offer guidelines for the restructuring of the now obsolete corporate conglomerate, and how to meet the major challenges faced by GE’s executive management: 1 go back to GE’s traditional core competences and divest non-core businesses 2 strengthen the authority of the financial and auditing function 3 expand globalisation 4 rebuild the mutual trust between company and employees 5 continue to expand global R&D to become again a leader in creativity and innovation. We develop a pessimistic and an optimistic scenario for the next decade and conclude that the most probable outcome will be GE survival and gradual recovery.

A Life Adrift: Soeda Azembō, Popular Song, and Modern Mass Culture in Japan (review)

Reviewed by: A Life Adrift: Soeda Azembō, Popular Song, and Modern Mass Culture in Japan Gerald Groemer A Life Adrift: Soeda Azembō, Popular Song, and Modern Mass Culture in Japan. By Michael Lewis. Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2008. 286 pages. Hardcover $85.00. Those familiar with today's stereotyped, mass-produced enka may find it almost impossible to imagine that in the past this genre of popular song valued politics over tears. Indeed, the majority of present-day Japanese, whether they love or detest the hackneyed melodies and maudlin lyrics typical of enka, remain unaware of the drastic transformation the genre has experienced over the last century. Most enka fans, usually middle-aged and elderly members of the working class, associate these songs with visions of lonely, tipsy men stumbling down the street at night, or with snowy scenes at distant harbors where jilted women wait for ferries to take them home. Only a century ago enka would have been far more likely to conjure up images of activism, war heroes, and dynamite. Michael Lewis's translation of the memoirs of Soeda Azenbō (1872–1944), the premier enka lyricist and performer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, presents a vibrant account of the world of enka during an age in which it was still new and thriving. Engaging, well translated, and replete with countless song texts composed by Azenbō and others, the book ushers the reader into a world of popular culture radically different from the current commercial music industry, steered by giant corporate conglomerates. A helpful introduction and copious notes provide socio-historical context and debunk the fables Azenbō sought to create for himself. This study constitutes a significant contribution to our knowledge of prewar Japanese culture and is likely to change most readers' image of enka and prewar Japanese popular music. [End Page 201] The roots of enka can be traced to chants, supposedly more shouted than sung, created and performed by early Meiji activists (sōshi). This period of enka did not last long, for after the promulgation of the Meiji constitution and the establishment of a national Diet, the Freedom and People's Rights movement that had inflamed the imagination of the sōshi found itself in a rapid decline. Newer enka thus shifted their themes in the direction of romance and urban woes. These songs were often performed by self-styled "students" wailing their creations on street corners, usually while peddling hastily produced chapbooks or flyers of lyrics. Soon thereafter, as Japan prepared for war—against the Chinese and in turn the Russians—song texts lurched toward the right and embraced blatantly militaristic themes. Nevertheless, some enka texts continued to feature social critique and satire, not necessarily because the writers and singers were socialists (though some, including Azenbō, were), but because topical songs, whether critical or humorous, were likely to sell. As enka singing changed from bellowing and sloganeering to more melodious styles of delivery, street singers ceased being content to perform unaccompanied. During the late Meiji and early Taishō years street performers could no longer hope to survive by barking dramatically inflected words of dissent. Instead, they took up the violin to accompany themselves more lyrically, or wandered the streets with a comrade who played the shakuhachi. By the 1920s performers were struggling to keep up with the challenges posed by phonograph records, imported genres, and then the radio. The new and rapidly developing music industry valued what was slick and easily consumable (and disposable) over what stirred political passions. Soon enough ensembles with guitars, piano, and other Western musical instruments became the standard backup for a genre evolving in a direction few would have predicted half a century earlier. Azenbō penned and published his memoir A Life Adrift during the wartime years. This fact, as Lewis points out, raises red flags of caution regarding matters of veracity, self-editing, and emphasis. In 1940 writing that did not openly support the government-approved goals of military supremacy and sociocultural unity was unlikely to get by the censor. Azenbō, in part to immunize himself from the open secret of his socialist past, and in part as a way of supporting some abstract concept...

Understanding Latin American political economy: varieties of capitalism or fiscal sociology?

Ben Schneider and David Soskice trace the origins and reproduction of Latin America's ‘hierarchical’ market economies to the perverse synergy of: 1) free-market economic reforms that systematically atomize (or demobilize) low-income constituencies; 2) majoritarian presidential elections that no less systematically ensure middle-class support for an upper-class agenda marked by labour market dualism, educational elitism, corporate conglomeration, and associational underdevelopment; and 3) proportionally-elected legislatures that are particularly susceptible to corporate influence. I worry that in their haste to incorporate Latin America into the varieties of capitalism framework, however, Schneider and Soskice: 1) overlook the Iberian roots of the region's principal economic institutions; 2) confuse symptoms like ignorance, informality, and corporate conglomeration with causes like inequality and fiscal underdevelopment; and 3) ignore not only the possibility but the likelihood of left-wing mobilization in the wake of democratization and international integration. And I therefore conclude with an alternative account that addresses not only the historical roots but the contemporary contradictions of the region's admittedly benighted political economies.

DIFFERENT WORLDS, DIFFERENT LANGUAGES: BRIDGING THE LAW-ECONOMICS DIVIDE IN COMPETITION LAW

‘The challenge for South African lawyers is to understand the relation between law and economics, to grasp the economic consequences of decisions taken in terms of the Act’. This, Davis J says, ‘become[s] important if South African competition law is to develop into a coherent body’. The interaction between law and economics is fundamental to the nature of competition law and a deep understanding of the two disciplines is a prerequisite for decisions that would meet the objectives of competition law. Competition law concerns the regulation of markets; competition policy seeks to ‘remove or reduce the distorting effects of excessive economic concentration and corporate conglomeration, collusive practices, and the abuse of economic power by firms in a dominant position’. This in itself calls for an economic analysis of market situations to assess the fairness of trade, and the evaluation of economic concepts such as dominance, market power, and market share, that define the relationship between players in the market.

CanWest global: a multi-media conglomerate amid perilous landscape

This paper uses the political economy of communication approach to understand and analyze the structure, policy, operations, control, and efficiency of a unique and major Canadian multi-media conglomerate example - CanWest Global Communications Corp. - in the dawn of the twenty first century. It relates the analysis to a range of criteria such as: the historical background and nature of the company, types of corporate conglomeration, tiers of firms, levels of ownership, structures of corporate control, policies of debt and lay-offs, range and diversity of cultural production, corporate sales’ revenues and market share, relationship to government and financial contributions to political parties, and composition of the board of directors and the interlocking relationships between its members and other institutions. The paper highlights debates over the effects of concentration of media ownership to introduce a fair understanding and suggest reasonable actions