bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Neoliberal hegemony, transnational capital and the terms of the EU's eastward expansion
Authors: Bohle Dorothee
Published: January 2010

Informed by a neo-Gramscian framework of analysis, this paper investigates the nature of neoliberal hegemony in the EU, and its consequences for the terms of enlargement. It will argue that both the deepening and enlargement of the EU are promoted by a historical bloc that seeks to establish the hegemony of transnational capital. In western Europe, social-democratic political forces, organised labour and the political forces of the peripheral countries have been incorporated into the historical bloc, albeit in a subordinated position. As a result, a precarious hegemonic constellation of ‘embedded neoliberalism’ has emerged. In contrast, the EU has exported a more ‘market-radical’ variant of neoliberalism to its new member states. This best serves the interests of transnational capital, and helps to preserve the order of'embedded neoliberalism’ within the old EU. Eastern European societies have not been in a position to question the unequal terms of enlargement. This can be explained by their specific legacies, which have led to their incorporation into the transnational historical bloc through passive revolution.
Debating critical realism in economics
Authors: Fine Ben
Published: January 2010

While accepting the contribution that critical realism has made in exposing the methodological weaknesses of mainstream economics, this rejoinder to Nielsen and Morgan reasserts the need for critical realism to go much further. In particular, it highlights the need for critical realism's explicit confrontation with—and critique of—economic theory, and the need for it to construct a political economy rooted in the categories of contemporary capitalism. The paper again calls on those who espouse critical realism to undertake the important work of developing a careful exposition of the meanings of structure, relation and tendency, etc., their interrelationships and their historical and social scope and variability—and to provide an explicit account of where critical realism diverges from Marxism and Marxist political economy.
Money and exchange
Authors: Arthur Christopher J.
Published: January 2010

This paper endorses Marx's deduction of the need for money to actualise value before exchange can be considered, so that, in exchange, money's function as means of purchase follows from money's ability to actualise value. This is contrasted with the Uno school, whose proponents mix concepts from Capital chapters 1 and 2. The paper goes beyond Marx in presenting a more dialectical derivation of money and a more rigorous account of the logic of exchange. The view of money advanced here gives a basis for its active role in the development of capitalism.
Towards an anti-racist Marxist state theory: A Canadian case study
Authors: Gordon Todd
Published: January 2010

While significant advances have been made in Marxist state theory, there are important gaps that need to be addressed if we hope to reach a more complete understanding of the state and the implications of its power. One of the most glaring weaknesses in Marxist state theory is its near-silence on questions of race and racism, since racism is so central to what the capitalist state does. Using the insights of anti-racist Marxist writings to complement the theoretical developments of Open Marxist theories of the state—and incorporating a historical study of the Canadian state—this article will show that capitalist state power and class relations are developed through, and cannot be abstracted from processes of racialisation.
The roots of hegemony: The mechanisms of class accommodation and the emergence of the nation-people
Authors: Pozo Luis M.
Published: January 2010

This study is an investigation of the foundations of hegemony, drawing and expanding on Gramsci's insight about the need for an ‘ethico-political’ principle such as the nation, linking dominant and subordinate to attain hegemony. In order to overcome Gramsci's limitations, it introduces the notion of ‘mechanisms of class accommodation’, referring to inclusive identities whose effect is to render the reality of class divisions politically irrelevant by stressing the ‘organic’ unity of dominant and dominated. It investigates the structural conditions for the nation's emergence, linked to the rise of capitalism, and the concrete ways in which it was constructed, strongly dependent on its nature as a mechanism of class accommodation.
Value form and class struggle: A critique of the autonomist theory of value
Authors: Kicillof Axel , Starosta Guido
Published: January 2010

This paper develops a critique of the ‘class struggle’ theory of value that emerged out of the autonomist Marxist tradition, arguing that although this theory has the merit of putting forward a production-centred, value-form approach, it eventually fails to grasp the determinations of value-producing labour. In particular, the notion of value as a mode of existence of the class struggle inverts the real relation between them and, more importantly, deprives the latter of both its historical specificity and the social and material basis of its transformative powers. This paper examines the political implications of these theoretical issues in value theory.
US power and the crisis of social democracy in Europe's second project of integration
Authors: Ryner Magnus
Published: January 2010

This article draws on the work of Poulantzas to argue that European social democracy is in crisis because European integration since the 1980s has been articulated within a relationship of structural subordination to US-led globalised financial capital, to which European capital has itself increasingly gravitated. This has also been the determining parameter of the state-as-social-relation, and contradicts the post-war welfare settlement. Against this backdrop, Europe has struggled to rearticulate a new social compromise and politics of social mediation. The attendant crisis of legitimisation has primarily benefited right-wing populism, which does not augur well for the health of Europe's synthesis of capitalism with democracy.
Beyond EU neoliberalisation: A progressive strategy for the British left
Authors: Baimbridge Mark , Whyman Philip B. , Burkitt Brian
Published: January 2010

Over the past two decades, the left has increasingly embraced European integration as a bulwark to globalisation. However, the view that the EU provides the potential for realising a progressive social and economic policy is problematic, since its approach is antithetical to traditional democratic-socialist objectives. Thus, the left either has to redouble its efforts to realise a fundamental reform of the EU's institutions and policy framework, or consider nationally-orientated alternatives which inevitably question the nature of the UK-EU relationship. This paper outlines a number of these policy options and evaluates their potential benefits and costs from within a political-economy framework.
Simultaneous valuation vs. the exploitation theory of profit: A summing up
Authors: Freeman Alan , Kliman Andrew
Published: January 2010

This paper examines the claims made by Simon Mohun and Roberto Veneziani in their article ‘The incoherence of the TSSI: A reply to Kliman and Freeman’, published in Capital & Class, no. 92. We show that they have effectively conceded that simultaneist interpretations of Marx's theory contradict his conclusion that exploitation (workers' surplus labour) is the exclusive source of profit in capitalism. We demonstrate the errors of logic in their claim that the temporal single-system (TSS) interpretation is incoherent. Thus the results of this debate serve to confirm that the TSS interpretation—contrary to simultaneist interpretations—reproduces all of Marx's principal disputed conclusions, and therefore constitutes a superior interpretation of his theory of value.
NHS LIFT and the new shape of neoliberal welfare
Authors: Aldred Rachel
Published: January 2010

The NHS LIFT (local improvement finance trust) programme is a new form of privatisation of UK primary care, based on the private finance initiative but going beyond it in important ways. It covers half of all English primary care trusts, and the approach has also been extended into education (the Building Schools for the Future’ programme). The LIFT model embeds multinational capital and corporate forms into UK primary care and affects both staff and services, but challenges to it have been patchy and low-key. There is a need to theorise what this new development means for public services, and to examine the potential for resistance to it.
Captive labour and the free market: Prisoners and production in the USA
Authors: LeBaron Genevieve
Published: January 2010

This article documents the resurgence of US prison work programmes under neoliberalism, investigating the dynamics through which state and private corporations have erected factories inside public prisons, moving manufacturing jobs behind bars. It contends that the corporate use of inmate labour has not resulted from an autonomous capital's quest for profit, but rather that it is a strategy that has developed through and cannot be abstracted from the US state as it has restructured in order to author processes of globalisation, and as it has adopted the neoliberal domestic policy of mass incarceration.
Chinese state-enterprise reform: Economic transition, labour unrest and worker representation
Authors: Hassard John , Sheehan Jackie , Yuxin Xiao
Published: January 2010

This paper explains rising labour unrest among China's state-owned enterprise employees through an examination of the tensions between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and urban industrial workers. In so doing, it assesses the way the CCP has responded to labour pressure for better industrial and political representation since the late-1980s, and how it has shown concern over workers' attempts to form independent labour organisations, seeking instead to contain an increasingly restive working class within the framework of state-controlled unionism. We argue that the CCP's relaxation of centralised control over a more open, ‘mixed’ economy has not been matched in the area of labour representation by a greater tolerance of autonomous organisation, leading to intensifying conflict with labour.
The ambiguity of resistance: Opposition to neoliberalism in Europe
Authors: Storey Andy
Published: January 2010

While there are emergent signs of anti-neoliberal resistance to EU policies and practices, this resistance remains ambiguous and fractured, often unable or unwilling to confront neoliberal European governance at the level of Europe itself. This is partly due to the very substantive barriers to counter-hegemonic projects that the EU has put in place; but it also reflects a failure on the part of much of the resistance to adequately identify, and engage with, all of the terrain on which the battle against neoliberalism must be fought.
The ethical economy: Towards a post-capitalist theory of value
Authors: Arvidsson Adam
Published: January 2010

Social production has risen on the agenda of the social sciences. Ye t most observers have been reluctant to confront the question of the value of these practices. Instead they have mostly been characterised as ‘free’, ‘common’ or beyond value. This article argues that far from being free, social production abides to a particular value logic, an ‘ethical economy’ where value is related not to the input of labour time, but to the ability to give productive organisation to a diffuse connectivity or, which is the same thing, to transform weak ties into affectively significant strong ones. The article concludes that progressive politics should work with this new emerging value logic.
Modes of Production in a Materialist Conception of History
Authors: Banaji Jairus
Published: January 2010

“… the extremely dubious speculative juggling, with the concepts and terms of the materialist method, which has under the pens of some of our Marxists transplanted the methods of formalism into the domain of the materialist dialectic; which has led to reducing the task to rendering definitions and classifications more precise and to splitting empty abstractions into four equally empty parts; in short, has adulterated Marxism by means of the indecently elegant mannerisms of Kantian epigones. It is a silly thing indeed endlessly to sharpen or resharpen an instrument, to chip away Marxist steel when the task is to apply the instrument in working over the raw material!” (Leon Trotsky)
In Defence of Value a Reply to Ian Steedman
Authors: Armstrong Philip , Glyn Andrew , Harrison John
Published: January 2010

Readers of the Bulletin will be aware of considerable past debate within the CSE on the definition and status of certain value categories. In Marx after Sraffa Ian Steedman argues, in part on the basis of points made in that discussion – in which he took a leading part – that all value categories constitute an obstacle to a scientific analysis of capitalism. This review article attempts a reply to his critique of value.
Trade Union Internationalism and the Supra-National State
Authors: Baker John S.
Published: January 2010

This note is a comment on an article in a previous issue. It argues that international trade unionism is at bottom a product of workers and their aspirations; its development clearly involves responses to the internation-alisation of capital, among many other features of capitalist development, but it is not governed solely by this. In actual fact, however, international trade unionism has been penetrated and moulded by U.S. corporations and the CIA, through U.S. union leaders, in order to make it a tool for breaking down barriers to the expansion of U.S. multinationals.
The political economy of military expenditure
Authors: Georgiou George
Published: January 2010

Writers on the political economy of military expenditure and the arms race are categorised into several schools of thought. Emphasis is put on the technical and historical limitations of the arguments put forward by each school. The author argues that the dynamic nature of the historical process results in socio-political and economic changes within a specific mode of production thus making attempts to formulate a general theory of military expenditure futile.
Use values, the law of value and the analysis of non-capitalist production
Authors: Bryceson Deborah Fahy
Published: January 2010

The law of value is the core of Marxist theory. When the fundamental basis of the law of value is conceived as a ‘market-mediated labour’ theory of value rather than a general labour theory of value subject to historical specification, a rigorous analysis of non-capitalist production is virtually precluded. This article relying on Marx's materialist method rather than his designation of the operation of the law of value solely to commodity production and capital, contends that the law of value provides the conceptual framework for restructuring an understanding of societal allocation of labour under all modes of production. It is argued that the law of value has non-capitalist regimes of operation which can only be recognized by reformulating the meaning of the term ‘use value’ and sharpening the analytical distinction between the terms ‘value’ and ‘exchange value’. This exercise opens up analytical vistas for the understanding of non-capitalist modes of production. Today's Third World material transformation is frequently accompanied by spasmodic, crisis-ridden social upheaval. From an analysis grounded in the law of value there is more likelihood that political action and policy formulation capable of effecting unified material and social transformation can emerge.
Internationalism and the Development of An Alternative Economic Strategy in the United States: A Review Essay on The Deindustrialization of America and Beyond the Waste Land
Authors: Willough John
Published: January 2010

The Deindustrialization of America: Plant Closings, Community Abandonment and the Dismanding of Basic Industry by Barry Bluestone and Bennett Harrison; and Beyond die Waste Land: A Democratic Alternative to Economic Decline by Samuel Bowles, David Gordon and Thomas Weisskopf are two recent contributions to the debate on alternative economic strategies in the United States. After critically discussing their proposals, this article moves on to outline the crucial ingredients of a more internationalist alternative.
Tory enterprise zones and the labour movement
Authors: Shutt John
Published: January 2010

Enterprise Zones were first established in the United Kingdom in 1981. Without waiting to assess the policy the Government has declared both a second group of zones and its intention to establish freeports. This article shows that far from being innovative free-market initiatives, enterprise zones in many ways mirror traditional regional policies and are heavily dependant on state intervention. They have achieved little so far in terms of job creation or economic growth but are performing a wider ideological function by attacking local democracy and legitimating broader calls for lower industrial rates. Despite the Labour Party's national policy of opposition to the zones, many Labour controlled councils have been keen to see EZs established in their areas.
The origins of the rebellion in the Punjab
Authors: Bhushan Bharat
Published: January 2010

At the beginning of June, the Indian government used 70,000 troops to put down rebellion in the Punjab. At the height of the operation, tanks, artillery and hundreds of commandos engaged in 3 days and nights of warfare to gain control of the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of the Sikh religion, which had been heavily fortified by the leaders of the rebellion. In the taking of the Golden Temple more than 100 soldiers, 350 pilgrims and 350 rebels lost their lives - amongst them Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale the most prominent leader of the rebellion. The Punjab is India's most advanced State. New technologies and capitalist relations have transformed agricultural productivity to the extent that the State now produces over fifty percent of the national marketed surplus of both wheat and rice. But the rebellion raised economic demands alongside those of religious identity – in a land claimed as a model of the success of modern Western technology were reborn the Middle Ages with their springtime of superstitions, prejudices, aggressiveness, religious witch-hunt'.

Whilst reporting the rebellion for Business India, Bharat Bhushan was able to interview the main leaders of the Akali Dal, the political party expressing many Sikh and Punjabi demands, including Bhindranwale. Here he analyses the main strands in the agitation, showing how its economic demands are primarily those of rich capitalist farmers but how popular support was ensured by an alliance with the religious identity of the whole Sikh community.
Marx after Schumpeter
Authors: Bellofiore Riccardo
Published: January 2010

Contemporary marxist economic theory has repeatedly raised the issues of structural change and the nature of money. The economic system of Joseph Schumpeter is a key precedent in the integration of exactly those two themes: Schumpeter provides a theory of endogenous structural economic development tied to a theory of bank credit and finance. This paper explores the lessons that can be drawn for Marxist political economy.
Small firms, big problems: the political economy of small businesses
Authors: Rainnie Al
Published: January 2010

Al Rainnie's paper is an attempt to understand the role and importance of small businesses in advanced capitalism. Arguing against widely held myths about small businesses, he claims they should not be viewed as anachronistic survivors of a bygone age destined for destruction. He suggests rather they are an integral part of Thatcher's Britain.
Nicaragua: The fifth year—transformations and tensions in the economy
Authors: Vilas Carlos M
Published: January 2010

An up-to-date and detailed analysis of the changes which have taken place in the Nicaraguan economy since the revolution. The article discusses the main tensions and contradictions that have marked the Sandinista strategy of national unity and a mixed economy in the context of the build-up of counter-revolutionary attacks and increasing economic difficulties.
Nationalised industry policies and the destruction of communities: Some evidence from North East England
Authors: Beynon Huw , Hudson Ray , Sadler David
Published: January 2010

This article examines the operation of three nationalised industries—coal, steel and water—in the North East of England. It looks at the links between them and assesses the impact of their policies on the economy and the environment of the local communities.

In addition, it explores the relationship between the private and public sectors by examining the effects of private sector open cast coal production upon the National Coal Board's deep-mined output. The authors conclude by pointing to a ‘new politics of production’.
Industrial policy and socialist strategy: Restructuring and the unity of the working class
Authors: Gough Jamie
Published: January 2010

Jamie Gough continues the reassessment of industrial intervention from the left, starting with Goodwin and Duncan's critical look at Sheffield's experience in Capital & Class 27 and Cochrane's review of the London Industrial Strategy in Capital & Class 28, but shifts the analysis from their emphasis on the local versus national problematic to the more general implications of the underlying models of intervention. He argues that recent left-wing restructuring policies seek to sidestep the powers of capital and end up by exacerbating divisions between groups of workers, and suggests that we have to return to intervention which takes as its main aim the combatting of these divisions and strengthening of workers' collective organisation.
What is to be done with radical academic practice?
Authors: Lauder Hugh , Freeman-Moir John , Scott Alan
Published: January 2010

Since the mid 1970s, radical analysis of formal educational institutions has become dominated by a form of academic Marxism or neo-Marxism epitomised in the published work of Apple, Willis, Whitty and Giroux, among others. Such work usually includes ‘Monday morning chapters’ which seek to answer the question: What is to be done? The authors subject this form of theorising to a fundamental critique, seeing it as the product of the forms and processes of bourgeois academia and bourgeois publishing houses. Instead of a self-interested search for a revolutionary agency located in academia, the authors advocate a much greater concern with the specificities of the class struggle and the question of revolutionary practice. They conclude with a discussion of the misreading of Willis's Learning to Labour to illustrate the need for a return to the revolutionary socialist tradition as the basis for a reorientation of Marxist educational theory.
New developments in manufacturing: the just-in-time system
Authors: Sayer Andrew
Published: January 2010

Over the last decade an important transformation has taken place in the nature of manufacturing. New forms of production organisation pioneered in Japan are out-performing traditional methods of mass production in the west. In this paper Andrew Sayer shows how the revolutionary ‘just-in-time’ system turns upside down many western assumptions about manufacturing, and discusses the possibilities and implications of its adoption in the west. According to Sayer the Left has tended to be dismissive of such innovations, and he sets out to show that such an attitude weakens the ability of the Left to respond to the challenge they pose.
Instant Print: Technology and capitalist control
Authors: Goss David
Published: January 2010

Instant print has transformed traditional jobbing printing; technical innovations coupled with a new consumer orientation have served to deskill and ‘feminise’ the work and to take it out of the arena of union control. The paper shows how MSC youth schemes have aided and abetted the casualisation process.
Exploitation and the Labour Theory of Value: a neo-Marxian reply
Authors: kin Steve Ran
Published: January 2010

It is argued that the purpose of the Labour Theory of Value is to provide a theory of capitalist exploitation, not a theory of relative prices. As such, the Morishima-type approach to the Steedman critique offers a convincing restatement of the Fundamental Marxian Theorem associating profit with the performance of surplus labour time. By comparison, the Roberts approach involves some strange arithmetic and the importation of a hybrid price/value term which makes it difficult to infer the Fundamental Marxian Theorem.
Learning and teaching managerial economics: a critical approach
Authors: Williams Michael
Published: January 2010

This is the second in our series of survey articles on topics in economics. Mike Williams argues that based, as it is primarily, on neoclassical thinking, Managerial Economics has no adequate theory of production or the creation of use values. It concentrates instead on aspects of business in which exchange and market valorisation are dominant. The author argues that far from being an aid to the rational use of resources and the satisfaction of consumer wants through more efficient use-value creation, Managerial Economics is directed at the interests of the firm and its capitalist owners and management. These are treated exclusively as “market enforced value-based interests.”
Marxism and philosophy: a critique of critical realism
Authors: Gunn Richard
Published: January 2010

By examining the conceptual status of marxist theorising, the author challenges the attempt by Bhaskar to make critical realism a philosophy for the left. This article argues that internal linkages between practice, theory and metatheory, evident in Marx's writings, provide a richer understanding of society than do the structured, causal relationships offered by philosophy.
The basic theory of capitalism: A critical review of Itoh and the Uno School
Authors: Clarke Simon
Published: January 2010

The Uno Approach and the Pure Theory of Capitalism
Neoliberalism and the recomposition of Finance Capital in Canada
Authors: Carroll William K
Published: January 2010

Carroll considers the historical recomposition of the contradictory unity of productive and money capital during the crisis of Fordism. The case study of the changing structure of Canadian finance capital traces the rise of business activity in Canada as distinct from the form it has taken in the us and the UK.
Capital restructuring and the domestic economy: Family self respect and the irrelevance of ‘rational economic man’
Authors: Wheelock Jane
Published: January 2010

Research into the divisions of domestic work between men and women living in Wearside — an area which suffered high and sustained levels of male unemployment in the 1970s and 1980s — suggests that the restructuring of the local economy is having a significant impact on gender relations within the home.
Class analysis and the politics of new social movements
Authors: Wilde Lawrence
Published: January 2010

If progress is to be mode towards the more widespread development of class consciousness, socialist theory and practice needs to take account of class aspirations expressed through new social movements. In opposition to post Marxist’ perspectives, Wilde argues for the relevance of class analysis to an understanding of the emancipatory potential of the new social movements.
Us and Them: business unionism in America and some implications for the UK
Authors: Cohen Sheila
Published: January 2010

Sheila Cohen provides a detailed review of Kim Moody's book An Injury to All. On the basis of a consideration of ‘business unionism’ in the US, Cohen presents a critical analysis of reformism in the British Trade Union movement, and urges socialists to recognise the practical potential of ‘economistic’ trade union activity.
Constitutional Norm versus Constitutional Reality in Germany
Authors: Bonefeld Werner
Published: January 2010

Critical political science represented by the Marburg school in Germany, has focused on the gap between constitutional norms and political reality. Agnoli criticises this school for presupposing that the norms are good in themselves and for its reformist optimism. He argues that the effect of the political economy of reforms is to safeguard political power against social emancipation.
After the Rectifying Revolution: the contradictions of the mixed economy? The political-economic transformations in central and eastern Europe
Authors: Williams Michael , Reuten Geert
Published: January 2010

The events of 1989–92 and the flood of advice from bourgeois economists is critically examined in the light of the Hegelian-Marxist theory of the mixed economy. The (sometimes catastrophic) failures of transition are laid at the door of the neglect of civil society.
Some Notes on the Theory of the Capitalist State
Authors: Bonefeld Werner
Published: January 2010

In reviewing The State Debate, Werner Bonefeld specifically concentrates on Clarke's ‘class struggle approach’ to the state and attempts to develop this distinctive and rich understanding of the form of the state.
Lost in Space
Authors: Spence Martin
Published: January 2010

The article traces the evolution of the US, Soviet-Russian and European space programmes, analysing the links with military production and capitalist development. The author argues that the response of western capital both to the current aerospace crisis and to Russia's new role will determine the extent of capitalist exploitation of outer space.
Economics, Politics, and Labour Process Theory
Authors: Rowlinson Michael , Hassard John
Published: January 2010

In focusing on the relationship between labour process theory and Marxist economics the authors highlight as problematic labour process theorists' abandonment of the labour theory of value and acceptance of managerialism in a way which conflates labour process theory with organisation theory. The similarity in the political rhetoric of the deskilling thesis and the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is brought out, and it is argued neither provides an adequate theoretical basis for revolutionary politics. The challenge for labour process theory is to show the connection between the subordination of labour and capitalist property rights and how those property rights can be dismantled.
In and Against the Training State
Authors: Mizen Phil
Published: January 2010

The article insists youth responses to state training must be grounded within an analysis of class relations, and a recognition of their clear-eyed awareness of the futility not only of their training, but also the work they will eventually enter. In this sense and in opposition to cultural explanations youth's resistance to training constitutes part of working class struggle and must be understood as historically constituted ‘in and against’ the state.
The Economic Consequences of Islamic Fundamentalism in Iran
Authors: Ghaffari Reza
Published: January 2010

The Islamic regime installed in Iran since 1979 has consistently claimed anti-imperialist and anti-Western credentials. In this paper the author argues that in fact, the regime represents the merchant bourgeoisie, the most backward element of Iranian capital. By analysing such economic statistics as are available, he demonstrates a massive transfer of wealth from the mass of the population, especially workers into the hands of the merchant capitalist class. The corollary of this is that the regime has consistently failed to develop Iran's industrial sector.
Cyprus: The Developmental State in Crisis
Authors: Panayiotopoulos Prodromos I.
Published: January 2010

The paper subjects grand theories to critical appreciation and argues that the state played a central role in transforming the Cypriot economy which is characterised as a small economy heavily dependent on export industries such as textiles and tourism. The relationship between the Cypriot ‘economic miracle’ and globalisation is investigated in the light of the experience of the export-led textile industry suffering from the consequences of American destabilisation of the Libyan economy—historically Cyprus' major export market.
The Political Economy of Neo-Liberal Reform in Latin America: A Critical Appraisal
Authors: Richards Donald G.
Published: January 2010

Proponents of neo-liberal reform have pointed to a number of ‘success' stories in Latin America as models of the correct road to stable growth and development. Examining the component parts of the reform packages, the article offers a new interpretation of neo-liberalization in Latin America, arguing that from the perspective of the majority of the urban working class and rural peasantry neo-liberalism has had decidedly adverse consequences. In doing so, it calls into question the accuracy of academic and journalistic interpretations of Latin American neo-liberalism.
The Paradox of Contemporary Labour Process Theory: The Rediscovery of Labour and the Disappearance of Collectivism
Authors: Lucio Miguel Martinez , Stewart Paul
Published: January 2010

Recent commentators on the Labour Process Debate have addressed the relationship between individualism, collectivism and broader changes in management strategies through a focus upon the absence of labour and the demise of collectivism. In this critical response the authors argue that almost invariably, while labour in some guise is rediscovered, this occurs at the expense of collectivism.
The Ascendancy of Neo-Liberalism in Australia
Authors: Fairbrother Peter , Svensen Stuart , Teicher Julian
Published: January 2010

On 19 August 1996, thousands of trade unionists and others stormed the Australian Parliament protesting against the Coalition Government's Work place Relations Bill. In a very visible departure from the years of cooperation and compromise with the previous Federal Labor Government, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) called on trade unionists and their supporters to demonstrate their opposition to the proposed legislation. This outbreak of anger might be thought to herald a reaction to heightened attacks on the Australian working class, ushered in by the election of the Coalition Government on 2 March 1996, which ended thirteen years of Labor rule under leaders Bob Hawke (1983-1991) and Paul Keating (1991-1996). However, while indicating a renewed activism by a disenchanted and alienated working class, this outburst of anger was not attributable to a sudden shift in the overall direction of government policy. Rather, it was an expression of a profound disenchantment with thirteen years of Australian ‘New Labor’ and a fear of the future under a Coalition Government committed to the sharp edges of the neo-liberal agenda.
The British Labour Movement and Economic and Monetary Union in Europe
Authors: Strange Gerard
Published: January 2010

ONE OF THE MOST DIFFICULT and controversial policy issues currently facing the British Labour movement is undoubtedly the question of whether or not a Labour government should take the historic step of abandoning sterling—not something it has favoured in the past—and sign up for the European single currency and full European economic and monetary union (EMU).
Capitalism, Industrialisation and Development in Latin America: the Dependency Paradigm Revisited
Authors: Ayres Ron , Clark David
Published: January 2010

At the empirical level there is evidence of industrialisation and economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean in the last 30 years but there has also been an increase in poverty and inequality. The authors argue that development and underdevelopment cannot be understood solely in terms of external dependency or national autonomy. The paper highlights the inadequacy of an empirical methodology which attempts to make universal theoretical generalisations from statistical regularities and suggests it is necessary to uncover the underlying structures which determine observable surface phenomena.
New Labour—new labour discipline
Authors: Gray Anne
Published: January 2010

PRESS COMMENTARY on Blair's first months has emphasised the pace of change. What has been overlooked is the substantive continuity with Tory policy in certain areas, notably the labour market. Hostile to both trade unions and the unemployed, Blair's government is continuing and developing the main lines of Tory labour market policy, although with a new attempt at ideological legitimation. The attack on the working class continues on three fronts. The first is a hardening of the work discipline to be imposed upon the unemployed. The second is to postpone even what little improvement in trade union rights had been promised, giving employers a space of time in which to ensure that rights to trade union recognition will not bite. The third is to embrace the neo-liberal ‘labour market flexibility’ agenda, resisting most attempts to improve social protection of labour at European and at UK level. The exception is the prospect of a national minimum wage, although exceptions now seem likely for participants in the youth ‘welfare to work’ scheme.
Gold Prices, Exchange Rates, Gold Stocks and the Gold Premium
Authors: Twite Garry
Published: January 2010

This paper studies the exposure of the stock prices of Australian gold-mining firms to changes in gold prices and the valuation effects of gold price exposure. Gold-mining firms have significant gold price exposure; the price of the average gold-mining stock moves 0.76% for each 1.00% change in Australian-dollar-denominated gold prices. Evidence from the behaviour of stock price sensitivities suggests that gold-mining firms can be represented as a portfolio of gold assets and embedded real options. Simple discounted cash flow models systematically underestimate the price of gold stocks. The evidence suggests that the valuation error is due to both the failure of discounted cash flow models to reflect managerial flexibility that is embedded in the operation of gold mines and the misuse of discounted cash flow techniques.
Studies of Cognition and Emotion in Organisations: Attribution, Affective Events, Emotional Intelligence and Perception of Emotion
Authors: Ashkanasy Neal M.
Published: January 2010

This article details the author's attempts to improve understanding of organisational behaviour through investigation of the cognitive and affective processes that underlie attitudes and behaviour. To this end, the paper describes the author's earlier work on the attribution theory of leadership and, more recently, in three areas of emotion research: affective events theory, emotional intelligence, and the effect of supervisors' facial expression on employees' perceptions of leader-member exchange quality. The paper summarises the author's research on these topics, shows how they have contributed to furthering our understanding of organisational behaviour, suggests where research in these areas are going, and draws some conclusions for management practice.
Negotiation as Social Interaction
Authors: Olekalns Mara
Published: January 2010

Why negotiators fail to find and implement mutually beneficial solutions is a central question in negotiation research. In answering this question, researchers have often focused on how situational and cognitive factors shape negotiators' outcomes. The relationship between negotiators' strategies and their subsequent outcomes is relatively less well investigated, although no less informative. In this article, I focus on post-1990 research to highlight some of the insights obtained from exploring communication processes in dyadic negotiations. This discussion identifies not only the need for further research in this field, but also the need to improve our understanding of how dyad composition and social cognition shape the negotiation process and outcomes.
Safety Climate and Safety Behaviour
Authors: Neal Andrew , Griffin Mark A.
Published: January 2010

This paper provides an overview of a research program examining the antecedents and consequences of safety climate and safety behaviour. A model is presented identifying the linkages between safety climate, safety knowledge, safety motivation, and safety behaviour. Findings from a series of studies are reviewed that support the hypothesized linkages between safety climate and safety behaviour. Longitudinal analyses have examined the role of additional factors, such as general organisational climate, supportive leadership and conscientiousness as sources of stability and change in safety climate and safety behaviour. Further developments of the model, aimed at integrating safety behaviour into broader models of work effectiveness, are also discussed.
Geared Equity Investments: A Case Study of Tax Arbitrage Down Under
Authors: Corrado Charles J. , Cheung Joe
Published: January 2010

Geared Equity Investment (GEI) contracts are an over-the-counter financial derivative product offered by Macquarie Bank, Ltd, to individual investors in Australia and New Zealand as a managed-risk investment in local shares carrying significant tax shield benefits. Upon issuance, a geared equity contract has three stakeholders: (1) the investor; (2) the issuer; and (3) the national tax authority. We assess the value of these contracts to each stakeholder and their support for tax arbitrage. We find that the national tax authority provides a significant subsidy to GEI contracts via tax shield benefits. These benefits support investor tax arbitrage in certain cases and issuer tax arbitrage in all cases examined.
A Survival Analysis of Australian Equity Mutual Funds
Authors: Cameron A. Colin , Hall Anthony D.
Published: January 2010

Determining which types of mutual (or managed) investment funds are good financial investments is complicated by potential survivorship biases. This project adds to a small recent international literature on the patterns and determinants of mutual fund survivorship. We use statistical techniques for survival data that are rarely applied in finance. Of specific interest is the hazard rate of fund closure, which gives the variation over time in the conditional probability of fund closure given fund survival to date.

For a sample of 251 retail investment funds in Australia from 1980 to 1999 we identify a hump-shaped hazard function that reaches its maximum after about five or six years, a pattern similar to the UK findings of Lunde, Timmermann and Blake (1999). We also consider the impact of monthly and annual fund performance (gross and relative to a market benchmark). Returns relative to the benchmark are much more important than gross returns, with higher relative returns associated with lower hazard of fund closure. There appears to be an asymmetric response to performance, with positive shocks having a larger impact on the hazard rate than negative shocks.
Momentum in Australian Stock Returns
Authors: Hurn Stan , Pavlov Vlad
Published: January 2010

Medium-term momentum, or the tendency of investment strategies based on buying past winning stocks while selling past losing stocks to maintain above normal performance over a period, has been a well-documented feature of stock returns in the US. We investigate the performance of momentum investment strategies in portfolios of Australian stocks and examine some of the common explanations and empirical features of momentum. The paper establishes the presence of a strong medium-term momentum effect, which cannot be completely accounted for by any of the possible explanations considered in this paper.
Voluntary Disclosure of Forward-Looking Earnings Information in Australia
Authors: Kent Pamela , Ung Karen
Published: January 2010

This study examines the voluntary disclosure of future earnings information in annual reports for Australian listed companies. We find that most Australian companies in our sample do not provide quantitative earnings, forecasts in their annual reports, although more than half of the sample do disclose forward-looking information relating to earnings, without specifically disclosing point estimates for the future. These companies mostly supply qualitative information with a positive bias, while the remainder of the sample discloses no forward-looking information relating to earnings. Our findings also suggest that larger companies with less volatile earnings tend to provide more future earnings information than smaller companies with relatively volatile earnings.
Towards a Multicultural World: Identifying Work Systems, Practices and Employee Attitudes that Embrace Diversity
Authors: Härtel Charmine E. J.
Published: January 2010

The research program described focuses on identifying the role of organisational culture, as reflected in workplace systems and practices, and employee and group attitudes in the outcomes of interactions among dissimilar parties. A systematic, theory-testing approach underlies the program, which aims to both develop and validate the diversity openness construct. The Perceived Dissimilarity-Openness Moderator Model developed from the research asserts that the affective, cognitive and behavioural consequences of diversity depend in part upon the perception of difference and subsequent quality and magnitude of the response to the perceived dissimilarity. When individuals or social systems (groups or organisations) are diversity-closed, outcomes are predicted to be less positive than when they are diversity-open.
Competition in the Market for Takeover Advisers
Authors: da Silva Rosa Raymond , Lee Philip , Skott Michael , Walter Terry
Published: January 2010

We investigate factors that motivate bidders to engage advisers, we model adviser selection and we test whether value-adding advisers gain market share. Our sample includes 801 attempted takeovers over 1989–1998 in Australia. Our results indicate advisers are likely to be engaged if the takeover deal is large, hostile, and includes non-cash compensation. We find deal completion is not as closely correlated with adviser rankings as does Rau (2000) but we confirm his finding that adviser ranked high on market value of deals advised do not have a comparative advantage in adding value to firms. However, we document some (limited) evidence that value-adding advisers achieve an increase in subsequent deal flow. Our results are consistent with specialization among takeover advisers.
Does Mentor Support Increase Women's Career Advancement More than Men's? The Differential Effects of Career and Psychosocial Support
Authors: Tharenou Phyllis
Published: January 2010

Based on past research on mentoring, this study examined whether mentor career support helped women's career advancement more than it did men's, and more than psychosocial (emotional) support did. The sample of 3220 Australians, chiefly from the public sector and finance and business service industry, was surveyed twice, a year apart. Mentor career support increased women protégés' advancement more than it did men's, whereas psychosocial support generally reduced women's advancement more than it did men's. Unexpectedly, female mentors, not males, had the strongest effects, both helping and hindering their protégé's advancement. Mentor support was not related to men's advancement. Why mentoring was differently related to men's and women's advancement was discussed.
Pricing to Market and a Volatile AUD
Authors: Crosby Mark
Published: January 2010

There are two features of exchange rate behaviour that are difficult to explain with conventional theoretical explanations. First, exchange rates are very volatile relative to fundamentals, and, second, departures from ‘fair value’ are very persistent. In this paper the implications of pricing-to-market models for exchange rate behaviour are examined. It is found that these models do better at explaining exchange rate behaviour than traditional models, though it would seem that there is still some way to go before we have a full understanding of high-to-medium frequency fluctuations in the exchange rate.