Global Restructuring Research Articles

Policies to Foster Entrepreneurship: Elements from the European Experience in the Integrated Micro-Meso-Macro Analytical Perspective

This article aims to present entrepreneurship policy practices from a micro, meso, and macro dimension to identify if there are signs of divergence or convergence in public intervention and policy of different European countries. To this end, it analyzes first the contemporary significance of entrepreneurship enhancement policies and, second, their relation to multilevel analysis. After proposing a repositioned and compound multilevel approach (micro-meso-macro) of the socio-economic system in terms of the “competitiveness web,” it uses as a case study different countries of the European South affected by the economic crisis and presents their political reforms over the last years. According to the findings of the research, it appears that development initiatives and regulations of these countries primarily focus on macro-economic and macro-social measures to enhance the potential of their business environment. On the contrary, an integrated policy in the context of the “competitiveness web” that takes into account all levels of space and different forms of developmental challenges by focusing primarily on the dynamics of innovative aptitude of the firms seems relatively underused until today. As a result, many firms and local business ecosystems maintain and reproduce their inability to grow and sustain their competitiveness in the current phase of restructuring of globalization, despite a wide variety of entrepreneurship enhancement policies.

World War I and the Restructuring of International Business

This paper considers the effect of the First World War on large-scale businesses in Second-Industrial-Revolution industries like steel, electricity, and chemicals. For firms in the nations of the Entente, we argue, the war mainly interrupted long-term trends that resumed in the aftermath of the conflict. For Germany, however, the war and its subsequent territorial settlements had a disruptive impact on the economic geography of key industries. The global restructuring that resulted from the collapse of the Habsburg, Romanov, and Ottoman empires and Germany’s loss of its colonial possessions set up a new kind of international rivalry as German firms sought to regain their dominance by contracting with emerging nations in the European periphery and the Global South to build industrial capacity, forcing Britain and the now capital-rich United States to compete for this business or see their influence in these areas decline. The end result of this rivalry was the construction of massive steel works in Brazil and other industrializing countries around the world. These investments would provide the foundation for the import-substituting policies of the post-World War II era.

BRICS and Global Restructuring: Notes for the Near Future

The multipolar cooperation between Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) countries seems to be a significant development in the current phase of restructuring of globalization. This article explores the relationship between the emerging radical readjustment of the world hegemony equilibrium with the past and future dynamics of the global socioeconomic system. It examines the relation of the ongoing institutionalization by the BRICS with the established international institutions and the relation of BRICS to the promotion of global economic development. After presenting a structured interpretation of the actual emergence of a “new globalization,” the article focuses on the aspects of BRICS evolution and dynamics that contribute to the discussion of the rise of a more balanced and more democratic multipolar global regime. It notices that multipolar cooperation at the international level should be more democratic as the BRICS claim, although these countries (China and Russia, in particular) face increasing concerns for their liberal rights and democratization domestically. In conclusion, it seems that a new and relatively stable global system now requires a repositioned conception of capitalism as an evolutionary socioeconomic phenomenon, in which innovation is the central and predominant organic process within all organizations.

The Dynamics of the Current Global Restructuring and Contemporary Framework of the US–China Trade War

The current escalation of the US–China trade war shows that the dynamics of the crisis and restructuring of the global socioeconomic system are in an accelerating phase. In the present study, we seek to explore the fundamental dimensions and future directions of the US–China trade war and delineate a conceptual framework for understanding its significance for restructuring of the global system. Through some representative scientific contributions to the study on the US–China trade war, we find an increasing emphasis on the declining and repositioning of US global hegemony, which the earlier optimistic theoretical forecasts did not manage to predict. By linking the dynamics of the crisis and restructuring of the global socioeconomic system to the forces of innovation and change management, we argue that this trade war is yet another proof of the gradual restructuring of global equilibriums. These alterations of the structures of the global system seem to lead to the creation of a new equilibrium regime we call “new globalization,” which requires the gradual construction of a new global architecture.

The Dynamics of the Current Global Restructuring and Contemporary Framework of the US–China Trade War

The current escalation of the US–China trade war shows that the dynamics of the crisis and restructuring of the global socioeconomic system are in an accelerating phase. In the present study, we seek to explore the fundamental dimensions and future directions of the US–China trade war and delineate a conceptual framework for understanding its significance for restructuring of the global system. Through some representative scientific contributions to the study on the US–China trade war, we find an increasing emphasis on the declining and repositioning of US global hegemony, which the earlier optimistic theoretical forecasts did not manage to predict. By linking the dynamics of the crisis and restructuring of the global socioeconomic system to the forces of innovation and change management, we argue that this trade war is yet another proof of the gradual restructuring of global equilibriums. These alterations of the structures of the global system seem to lead to the creation of a new equilibrium regime we call “new globalization,” which requires the gradual construction of a new global architecture.

Global value relations and local labour control regimes in rice farming in Uganda and Tanzania

This study presents evidence on the organisation of farm work in rice farming areas in Uganda and Tanzania, where farms of different scale co-exist, drawing on the same pool of workers. Here, local labour regimes have been rapidly reorganised following the creation and expansion plans of mega-farms after the global financial crisis of 2007/2008, characterised as land grabs. The synchronic comparison of two rice mega-farms is based on the history of relations of production in rice farming areas in the region. With post-crisis global restructuring, shifting global value relations have driven the reorganisation of control within the labour process in frontiers of capitalist accumulation. This article argues that local labour process and farm labour regimes are important elements in the process of mediation with global value relations in the study areas. Labour control within the labour process and local labour regimes across farm scale are at the core of the additional reasons leading local workers to see employment on mega-farms undesirable, compared to gang work on local farms of different size. Work on mega-farms, alongside its highly exploitative character, is undesirable for workers because of the tight system of disciplining at the basis of labour control, which creates conflicts with the social reproduction system. The devalorisation and exploitation of labour is enabled by disciplining and control over workers in the production process.

РОЗВИТОК ТВОРЧИХ ЗДІБНОСТЕЙ МОЛОДШИХ ШКОЛЯРІВ ШЛЯХОМ ВИКОРИСТАННЯ ІННОВАЦІЙНИХ ТЕХНОЛОГІЙ

В сучасному суспільному, економічному та політичному житті України назріла проблема глобальної перебудови системи освіти. Її метою постає виховання гармонійної, толерантної, конкурентоспроможної, творчої особистості, здатної до самореалізації. Тому невід’ємною складовою навчально-виховного процесу є розвиток творчих здібностей дітей. Для реалізації цієї мети важливо користуватися новітніми технологіями навчання. Наразі в початковій школі вчителі не бажають відходити від традиційної системи навчання або не обізнані в інноваційних методах навчання. Нетрадиційні форми навчання, оригінальні методи, інноваційні технології на уроках в початковій школі спонукають дитину до нестандартного мислення, пошуку різноманітних розв’язків завдань, пізнавальної активності, фантазування та розкриття творчого потенціалу. Отож, вчителям необхідно вивчати, аналізувати, створювати самостійно, підбирати влучні для теми уроку інноваційні форми та методи роботи, залучаючи учнів до активної навчальної діяльності, в процесі якої розвиваються їх творчі здібності.

English

A geo-economic development analysis in the Balkans under the perspective of the interests of Greece is useful to conceive better the ever-increasing tense framework of globalization's restructuring. Both the study of the different sources of energy (petroleum and, increasingly, natural gas) and the numerous new geopolitical changes demonstrate the existing tensions within the contemporary international strategic relations. The energy security of the Balkans region presents an excellent case to study and realize the contradicted interests in national, regional and supranational level.

Crisis, institutional innovation and change management: Thoughts from the Greek case

Abstract. This article explores how the current global crisis and restructuring of global capitalism is related to innovation, in broad terms, and change management. The aim is to understand this relation by first presenting a synopsis of the approaches to the crisis of the Greek socioeconomic system, second focusing on the concept of innovation in institutional terms, and third examining the change management mechanisms that seem useful for the articulation of public economic policy in Stra.Tech.Man terms (synthesis of Strategy-Technology-Management). We suggest that to overcome actual structural crises -such as the Greek socioeconomic crisis- the implementation and valorization of well balanced and effectively implemented sets of institutional innovations is crucial, provided that integrated public policy change management mechanisms are in place. Keywords. Globalization restructuring, Greek crisis, Structural socioeconomic crisis, Institutional innovation, Public policy reform, Change management, Stra.Tech.Man analysis. JEL. O10, B52, O31.

Global Crisis and Restructuring: Theory, Analysis, and the Case of Greece

Τhis book examines the global restructuring since its appearance from the late 2000s to the present. It tries to describe and explore the fundamental dimensions of the phenomenon of the current crisis and repositioning of the global socioeconomic system by following an analytical perspective that exceeds a “conjunctural” perspective. It counter-proposes a view of examining the contemporary historical configurations of globalization dynamics in structural and evolutionary terms. Finally, it considers that a valid perception of the current global restructuring requires the simultaneous co-examination of adaptation, innovation, and change management of the partial socioeconomic organizations, sectors of economic activity, and overall socioeconomic systems, at all the “organically linked” levels of space: local, national, international, and global. [...] In conclusion, this book proposes a new perspective of understanding the global dynamics and moves towards a repositioned perception of the phenomenon of global crisis and restructuring in structural and evolutionary terms. Nowadays, according to this analytical proposition, “organic” and transversal innovations and the prerequisite change management mechanisms pose the central development question for the sustainable exit of the global crisis. Moreover, it seems that for socioeconomic systems in a structural crisis, such as the Greek system, “conjunctural” perspective to confront the crisis prevails with insufficient results. The structuration of economic policy in Greece until now reflects this methodological and interventional inefficiency in constructing anti-crisis paths. To rupture the vicious cycle of misunderstandings in economic policy formation and implementation and moving towards a new, virtuous cycle of viable and long-term development, an evolutionary and historical understanding seems a prerequisite not only for Greece but also for other socioeconomic systems at a similar level of development. Finally, this continuous reshaping process of the global environment requires from all the agents of action new adaptation mechanisms. The manner that local and national systems manage to achieve innovation and change management is critical and, therefore, policy initiatives such as the Local Development and Innovation Institutes that focus on fostering local innovation seem essential for constructing sustainable developmental trajectories.

Conflicting norms: Impact of the Model Law on Chapter 11's Global Restructuring Role

AbstractThe Model Law's emphasis on the debtor's center of main interest (COMI) as the proper jurisdiction for the main insolvency proceeding is at odds with the traditional United States approach of applying Chapter 11 to restructure foreign entities with no significant US connection. This paper explores whether adoption of the Model Law has made Chapter 11 less available for debtors with a foreign COMI. The Model Law has had no direct impact on the US courts approach to foreign‐entity Chapter 11 cases. However, shortly after the Model Law's adoption, several reported US decisions added the pendency of a foreign insolvency proceeding as a factor supporting discretionary abstention or dismissal of foreign Chapter 11 cases. While those decisions do not refer to the Model Law, it is possible that the Model Law's COMI‐centric approach influenced this new trend.

Inequality, financialization, and the US current account deficit

AbstractThe US has run a persistent current account deficit since 1982. Its growth particularly accelerated in the early 2000s, and the deficit peaked at about 6% of US GDP in 2006. Coincidentally, the distribution of income and wealth has grown progressively unequal, while the so-called financialization of the US economy has deepened. This article argues that the concomitant processes of persistent current account deficits, rising inequality, and deepening financialization are not merely coincidental but can be traced to common causes arising from the global restructuring of US production through foreign direct investment and offshoring, which has underlain the structural transformation of the US economy since the 1980s. On the one hand, the US is the world’s biggest exporter of capital and recipient of foreign investment income; on the other hand, it is the biggest importer of foreign goods, often produced with the involvement of US capital. Ultimately, deindustrialization at home—a major factor behind the loss of middle-wage, middle-class jobs, and thus of rising income inequality—and the transnationalization of US production have boosted corporate profits, thereby propping up and accelerating the financialization of the US economy.

Crisis and Restoration of Neoliberal Policy in the USA: 2008–2018

ABSTRACTThroughout the twentieth century, American capitalism has proved strategically flexible and successful at periodically restructuring itself to take advantage of global opportunities that arose due to world wars, economic crises, and technological change and innovation. On three major occasions in the twentieth century, the American capitalist system successfully restructured itself. The first and second restructurings occurred during1912–1917 and 1944–1953, respectively. The third restructuring, beginning after 1978, is often identified with what is called neoliberalism. Neoliberalism underwent a period of crisis as a consequence of the 2008–2009 global financial crash and great recession. Its restoration under Obama failed. Beginning in 2017, a new more aggressive and virulent form of neoliberalism has begun to emerge under Trump. Whether the Trump restoration of a new neoliberalism 2.0 will succeed has yet to be determined. And should it fail, will that failure usher in a transition period in the US and global economy in the 2020s decade that will lead to a fundamentally different US and global economic restructuring after 2020? What lies ahead in the remaining two years of the Trump regime, 2019–2020, will likely answer these questions.

Ride Comfort Simulation of Electric Vehicle

Facing the new situation of global energy restructuring, occupying the highland of future industry competition and environmental protection, the major developed countries in the world will develop the electric vehicle industry to the national strategic level, and thus the electric vehicle has become the focus of competition among transnational automobile enterprises.In addition to ensuring the power performance of the vehicle, electric vehicles should also satisfy the safety and comfort of passengers and ensure the integrity of cargo transportation. Therefore, it is necessary to study the ride comfort and handling stability of electric vehicles.In this paper, the whole vehicle model is established by ADAMS/Car software, and the ride comfort simulation analysis is carried out. ADAMS/Car software is used to build the models of front suspension subsystem, power assembly subsystem, body subsystem, rear suspension subsystem, tire subsystem and steering subsystem, and then the models of each subsystem are assembled into the whole vehicle rigid body model. The elastomer model of the control arm is generated by setting MNF file, and the rigid-flexible coupling model of the control arm is established by replacing the rigid model of the control arm with the elastomer model. The ride comfort of the rigid-flexible coupling model is simulated and analyzed. The total weighted magnitude is 116.2646. When the speed of the electric vehicle is 40 km/h, the passenger comfort is quite uncomfortable.

Value Destruction and Wealth Transfer Under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016

India experienced a major structural change with the enactment of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016. Since then, India’s ranking under the Insolvency head in the World Bank Group’s Doing Business report has sharply risen from 136 to 103. India was also awarded the Global Restructuring Review (GRR) Award for the Most Improved Jurisdiction in restructuring and insolvency regime. Yet, the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 has also raised two important concerns - the value destruction problem and wealth transfer problem. This article applies theoretical concepts from the law and economics literature on insolvency to identify the sources of these two problems in insolvency law. It then applies these theoretical concepts to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 to identify two potential sources of the value destruction problem and four potential sources of the wealth transfer problem in the law. Indian policymakers need to revisit some of the fundamental legislative design choices embedded within the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 to successfully address these very sources of the value destruction and wealth transfer problems.

SPECIAL ASPECTS OF THE MODERN WORLD ECONOMY: TRANSITION FROM A UNIPOLAR TO A MULTIPOLAR WORLD SYSTEM

This paper reveals the consequences of the unipolar system of the world economy provided by the United States leadership in the military-technological, financial-economic, geopolitical and information-ideological spheres. It was established that after the collapse of the socialist camp, the concepts of ‘humanitarian intervention’ and ‘spreading democracy’ were brought to the forefront. In practice, Western European countries have demonstrated their readiness to judge the solutions of domestic political disputes in other countries of the world, especially when it comes to geopolitically important countries. A series of ‘colour revolutions’ have become a demonstration of this policy. Therefore, the globalization of the modern world does not mean the homogenization of development indicators of countries’, but instead leads to further delamination and inequality. The gap between the world leaders and the rest of the world in terms of indicators reflecting the dynamics of the standard of living, the quality of life, scientific and technological progress, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, has significantly increased.It is illustrated that attempts of the US to consolidate its hegemony in the form of ‘leadership’ in the world had led to the erosion of international legal principles enshrined in the United Nations Charter. Therefore, the United States attempts to solve the problems in Iraq and Afghanistan unilaterally has failed.The objective and subjective signs of a global restructuring of the existing unipolar world system are revealed.

Global Crisis, Innovation and Change Management: Towards a New Systemic Perception of the Current Globalization Restructuring

The “crisis of capitalism” is not, of course, an unprecedented discourse in the evolution of economics and the investigation of economic realities. In Neo-Schumpeterian economics crises constitute necessary evolutionary steps, intrinsically linked with breaking ‘moments’ and change. However, what makes the current crisis clearly different, and to a large extent subversive, is its ever increasing complexity and evolutionary-dialectic substance. The mixing of cooperation and competition, on an organizational and macro-economic level, reproduces on a global scale the need for a reconsideration of basic economic mechanisms. It tends to undermine and rapidly destroy the mechanistic relations and structures of all kinds and dimensions that have managed to provide profitability and effectiveness over the recent years. In this context, the search for strategic innovation, constant organizational renewal and the diffusion of production oriented at high technological expertise, seem to progressively become the critical synthetic components for building a new development model at all levels and for all agents of action.This paper focuses on the introduction of a three tier question which could be put forward as follows. First we ask what is the current global restructuring crisis and what would be a new growth model that would lead us to the exit of it on a global scale. Second we address the issue of what kind of innovation mechanisms does such a new model of interspatial restructuring and development require. Finally we analyse why is this new innovative direction—both in global terms and in individual socioeconomic systems—a prerequisite for building new types of effective change management mechanisms.The starting point of our approach is the position that any fragmented approach in the individual aspects of the triangle of global crisis, innovation, and change management, is now analytically misguided and practically powerless. Only an effort to systemically understand the phenomenon, in its constant and dialectic structure, is now an adequate condition for outlining the future developmental path of globalization at all levels of action.

Initial Protein Unfolding Events in Ubiquitin, Cytochrome c and Myoglobin Are Revealed with the Use of 213 nm UVPD Coupled to IM-MS

The initial stages of protein unfolding may reflect the stability of the entire fold and can also reveal which parts of a protein can be perturbed, without restructuring the rest. In this work, we couple UVPD with activated ion mobility mass spectrometry to measure how three model proteins start to unfold. Ubiquitin, cytochrome c and myoglobin ions produced via nESI from salty solutions are subjected to UV irradiation pre-mobility separation; experiments are conducted with a range of source conditions which alter the conformation of the precursor ion as shown by the drift time profiles. For all three proteins, the compact structures result in less fragmentation than more extended structures which emerge following progressive in-source activation. Cleavage sites are found to differ between conformational ensembles, for example, for the dominant charge state of cytochrome c [M + 7H]7+, cleavage at Phe10, Thr19 and Val20 was only observed in activating conditions whilst cleavage at Ala43 is dramatically enhanced. Mapping the photo-cleaved fragments onto crystallographic structures provides insight into the local structural changes that occur as protein unfolding progresses, which is coupled to global restructuring observed in the drift time profiles.Graphical

Thinking forward from New Zealand from (and with) global restructuring

ABSTRACTGlobal Restructuring (Fagan, R., and M. Webber. 1994. Global Restructuring: The Australian Experience. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.) and the two-volume Changing Places project (Britton, S., R. Le Heron, and E. Pawson. 1992. Changing Places in New Zealand: A Geography of Restructuring. Christchurch: The New Zealand Geographical Society.); and Le Heron, R., and E. Pawson, eds. 1996. Changing Places—New Zealand in the Nineties. Auckland: Longman Paul. in New Zealand provide very different accounts of economic restructuring in Australia and New Zealand respectively in the early 1990s. Taken together they provide a statement of the prominence of economic geography within antipodean geography at the time. However, the demise of command-and-control economic management that they analysed was already bringing about a defining shift in the fortunes of the sub-discipline. The paper suggests that the two volumes shaped different pathways for economic geography in the two countries. It goes on to ask what this reading might tell us about how to revitalise economic geography in our classrooms and disciplinary debates and contribute new strengths to the discipline more broadly.

PDVSA US Litigation Trust: What Creditors Should Know About the Trust, Its Claims and Its Implications for Venezuela's Restructuring

Last week, lawyers unsealed a complaint filed in federal court in Miami, Florida on behalf of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (“PDVSA”), against a group of 44 oil trading companies, banks and individuals. The suit alleges that the defendants participated in a 14-year scheme to rig bids, underpay on purchases and overcharge on sales, allegedly resulting in billions of dollars of losses to PDVSA. The lawsuit was brought by an entity called the PDVSA US Litigation Trust, which was formed for the purpose of pursuing potential claims by PDVSA, and to which PDVSA has reportedly assigned its litigation rights related to the alleged bribery scheme but retained the right to receive the net recovery the Trust obtains. The decision by PDVSA to pursue these claims in the United States at this time via a litigation trust raises a number of interesting legal and strategic issues not just for the defendants named in the suit, but also for PDVSA’s bondholders and other creditors. With respect to the litigation, there are questions as to whether the Trust has sufficient standing to be a claim, whether some or all of the claims will be barred by applicable statutes of limitation, and whether the Trust will be able to obtain the cooperation from PDVSA necessary to respond discovery requests. The case may also generate a reaction by financial creditors of PDVSA, who until now faced the prospect of pursuing claims to billions of dollars in defaulted PDVSA bonds without any known PDVSA assets in the United States, other than PDVSA’s indirect interest in CITGO Petroleum Corporation. Those creditors might now be able to lay claim to the economic value of the Trust’s lawsuit or to any recovery, on the theory that the Trust is pursuing the claims for PDVSA’s sole benefit and PDVSA has the right to receive any recovery assuming no impediment posed by any then-pending U.S. sanctions. The potential ability to attach the Trust’s recoveries may convince creditors to pursue actions against PDVSA in order to position themselves as the first beneficiaries of those recoveries, or may otherwise provide the proverbial “carrot” to offer creditors willing to restructure their claims as part of an eventual global restructuring of the debt of PDVSA, and possibly even the Republic.