Bio
Hello, welcome to my website.
I am Associate Professor of Political Science and the College at the University of Chicago.
For many years, I have been doing research and publishing in the areas of comparative political economy, economic sociology, economic geography and business history. The common thread in my work has been an interest in the changing boundaries of firms and the arrangements that govern them in Europe (especially Germany) the United States and Japan.
Concretely, the research has focused on the interrelationship between the following four levels of socio-economic process:
the division of labor within and among firms, for example:
- workplace organization: e.g.: craft organization, Taylorism, lean production, cellular forms of organization,
- vertical integration and disintegration of production,
- supply chains,
- multinationalization, offshoring,
- governance relations
the relationship between individual producer strategies and the organization of industrial markets, for example:
- specialization/ diversification,
- customization,
- modularity,
- collaboration,
- competition,
- industrial organization,
- cartelization,
- anti-trust
the role of non-firm organizations and institutions in the production and reproduction of firm strategies, for example:
- research and training institutions,
- financial institutions,
- trade unions,
- business associations,
- courts (bankruptcy),
- courts (bankruptcy)
and the relationship between economic governance and political governance.
My work is comparative, historical, qualitative and very informed by pragmatism.
Book Projects:
My first book, Industrial Constructions: The Sources of German Industrial Power, (Cambridge University Press, 1996, Paperback 2000) examined the variety of industrial organizational and governance arrangements that emerged during the process of German industrialization. It argued in particular that there were two dominant patterns of regionally embedded industrial development in German history: an autarkic, vertically integrated pattern dominated by large firms and a decentralized, vertically disintegrated pattern, dominated by clusters of small and medium sized producers. The book showed how both patterns of industrialization were embedded in extra firm arrangements and policies for training, competition, finance, dispute resolution etc. Industrial Constructions traced the evolution of these two forms of "industrial order" over time. Development and change within and between both forms of industrial order involved a process of creative institutional and strategic re-composition by actors at many different levels. A central claim of the book is that Germany never had a single or unitary system of governance in the political economy. There are multiple logics of governance at work at every level. The "national business system" in Germany, in other words, is a composite system.
My second book, to be published by Oxford University Press in 2010, is entitled Manufacturing Possibilities: Creative Action and Industrial Recomposition in the U.S., Germany and Japan. This book, like the first one, is interested in problems of industrial development, governance and change. Also like Industrial Constructions, the new book adopts a strongly sociological and political orientation toward industrial processes, rather than a more narrowly economic one. Manufacturing Possibilities examines adjustment dynamics in the steel, automobile and machinery industries in Germany, the U.S., and Japan since World War II. As national industrial actors in each sector try to compete in global markets, the book argues that they recompose firm and industry boundaries, producer strategies, stakeholder interests and governance mechanisms at all levels of their political economies. The basic orientation of Manufacturing Possibilities is that industrial development is best understood very broadly as a process of socio-political transformation.
Theoretically, the book marks a departure from both neoliberal economic and historical institutionalist perspectives on change in advanced political economies. It characterizes industrial change as a creative, bottom up, process driven by reflective social actors. The argument involves two distinctive claims. The first is that action is social, reflective and ultimately creative. When their interactive habits are disrupted, industrial actors seek to repair their relations by reconceiving them. Such imaginative interaction redefines interest and causes unforeseen possibilities for action to emerge, enabling actors to trump existing rules and constraints. Second, industrial change driven by creative action is recompositional. In the social process of reflection, actors rearrange, modify, reconceive and reposition inherited organizational forms and governance mechanisms as they experiment with solutions to the challenges that they face. Continuity in relations is interwoven with continuous reform and change. Most remarkably, creativity in the recomposition process makes the introduction of entirely new practices and relations possible.
Ultimately, the message of Manufacturing Possibilities is that social study of change in advanced political economies should devote itself to the discovery of possibility. Preoccupation with constraint and failure to appreciate the capaciousness of reflective social action has led much of contemporary debate to misrecognize the dynamics of change. As a result, discussion of the range of adjustment possibilities has been unnecessarily limited.
Current Projects
Currently I am engaged in two new collaborative international research projects on the evolution of global production networks and the relationship between developing and developed manufacturing regions. The first is a collaboration with Volker Wittke of SOFI in Göttingen, Germany. This three year project, financed by the Hans Böckler Stiftung extends the analysis of vertical disintegration that makes up the second half of Manufacturing Possibilities by looking at the redefinition of the spatial division of labor in German machinery and automobile production. This project will use a series of in depth case studies to examine how German producers spatially arrange their production. Of particular concern will be the conditions that allow for continued production in Germany, as well as the obstacles that confront small and medium sized producers in face of pressures to globalize their production.
The second project is a collaboration with Jonathan Zeitlin of the University of Amsterdam. In conjunction with the Global Components Project, financed by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, we have been conducting research on the global medical devices industry. We use this industry as a case study to discuss the emergence of new trends in the spatial organization of production in emergent areas of modern manufacturing. Central to our focus is the emergence of new forms of multi-nationalization and internal firm governance among small and medium sized industrial producers in the industry. We are also very interested in analyzing the role of finance in the organization of the sector, in particular the role played by private equity. Finally, from the research we hope to be able to identify possibilities for regional industrial policy in high wage regions to support and capture benefits from the emerging trends. Field work for this project will take place in the United States, Germany, Italy, Eastern Europe and China.
Edited Books/Journal Special Issues
While engaging in the above projects, I have written many articles, some of which are available on this website, and all of which may be found referenced on my CV. I have also co-edited one book and one special issue of the business history journal, Enterprise and Society.
The co-edited book was done together with Jonathan Zeitlin (then of the University of Wisconsin). It was entitled Americanization and its Limits: Reworking Management and Technology in Europe and Japan after World War II, (Oxford University Press, 2000). Essays in this book analyzed the diffusion and selective adaptation of American management and technologies in Europe and Japan in the twenty years after World War II. My own essay looked at the reconstitution of the Steel Industry in Germany and Japan under US occupation in an effort to understand the interpenetration of ideas of industrial governance and organization with contending conceptions of democracy and political order.
The special issue of Enterprise and Society, which appeared in September 2007, highlights a new wave of historical scholarship on the matter of corporate governance in the US, Britain, Japan, France and Germany. My own introductory essay in this issue focused on the surprising heterogeneity of governance forms within national economies. Much of the literature on comparative governance tends to group national economies under unitary types, yet the new emerging historical literature shows that country experiences are far from unitary-different forms of governance often exist within the same country simultaneously. This is even more the case over time.
Teaching
I teach both undergraduate and graduate courses at the University of Chicago.
At the undergraduate level, I teach exclusively in the common core. For many years, I have been the chair of one of the primary sequences in the undergraduate social sciences common core curriculum known as Power Identity and Resistance. The course focuses on close reading of foundational texts in the liberal tradition, as well as core critical arguments against that tradition. I have outlined the general aims of this course in a number of talks to alumni and prospective students and their families. An outline for one of those talks may be found here.
On a graduate level, I teach seminars related to my substantive and theoretical interests. Generally I teach one substantive, middle range comparative seminar and one social theoretically oriented seminar a year. Examples of my graduate courses can be found on the "Courses" page of this website.