Leo McCann is Professor of Organisation Studies at Manchester Business School. His research and teaching focuses on the impacts of large-scale economic change on work and organization across numerous countries. He has written many articles on the subject of the international transformation of white-collar work in journals such as Journal of Management Studies, Human Relations, and Organization Studies. He is the co-author of Managing in the Modern Corporation(Cambridge University Press, 2009), a major empirical study into the restructuring of white-collar work in the UK, USA and Japan. His research draws on the paradigms of sociology of work, varieties of capitalism, and political economy, exploring how large-scale ‘global’ transformations are translated through national institutional structures with often profound effects on the everyday lives of organizations, managers, workers and citizens. He is also the author of International and Comparative Business: Foundations of Political Economies (Sage Publications, 2014), a textbook based on over a decade of experience teaching and researching comparative capitalism, globalization, and the restructuring of organizations and work.

This is a comprehensive collection of classic essays on capitalism and business is carefully selected and a must read for students and scholars interested in the field. It charts the trajectory of the intellectual development and theoretical debates around the issues of capitalism and offers rich empirical insights in various national and industrial settings. It is a very timely collection that provides food for thought for those engaging in similar studies in newly industrialised, transitional and emerging economies.

• VOLUME ONE: THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF CAPITALISM AND BUSINESSThe Spirit of Capitalism - Max WeberFreedom in a Complex Society - Karl PolanyiIndustrialization, Management, and Ideological Appeals - Reinhard BendixPluralistic Industrialism - Clark Kerr, John Dunlop, Frederick Harbison and Charles MyersEconomic Backwardness in Historical Perspective - Alexander GerschenkronThe Argument in Brief - Andrew ShonfieldInstitutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony - John Meyer and Brian RowanThe Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields - Paul DiMaggio and Walter PowellEconomic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness - Mark GranovetterClio and the Economics of QWERTY - Paul DavidCrafting an Analytic Framework I: Three Pillars of Institutions - William ScottThe Régulation School, the Employment Relation and Financialization - John Grahl and Paul TeagueSystem, Society and Dominance Effects in Cross-National Organisational Analysis - Chris Smith and Peter MeiksinsVOLUME TWO: CLASSIC AND HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS OF CAPITALISM AND BUSINESSAn Introduction to Varieties of Capitalism - Peter Hall and David SoskiceVarieties of Capitalism - Richard WhitleyInstitutional Complementarity and Diversity of Social Systems of Innovation and Production - Bruno AmablePositive-Sum Solutions in a World of Trade-Offs? - Gosta Esping-AndersenThe Comparative Study of Organizational Paradigms - Mauro GuillénManaging for Ford - Ken Starkey and Alan McKinlaySoviet Marxism and the Ending of Mass Unemployment - David LaneWhere Are We Now? Musings of an Evolutionist - Ronald DoreStandort Deutschland in the Globalising Economy: An End to the Economic Miracle? - Rebecca HardingMany Roads to Flexibility: How Large Firms Built Autarchic Regional Production Systems in France - Bob HanckéThe Decline of the British Economy: An Institutional Perspective - Bernard Elbaum and William LazonickThe Swedish Model in Turbulent Times: Decline or Renaissance? - Dominique Anxo and Harald NiklassonDeep Finance: The Organizational Bases of South Korea’s Financial Collapse - Nicole BiggartVOLUME THREE: CONTEMPORARY EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATIONS OF VARIETIES OF CAPITALISMThe Financialization of the American Economy - Greta KrippnerRestructuring Managerial Labour in the USA, the UK, and Japan: Challenging the Salience of ‘Varieties of Capitalism’ - Leo McCann, John Hassard and Jonathan MorrisThe Disintegration of Organised Capitalism: German Corporate Governance in the 1990s - Jürgen Beyer and Martin HöpnerDeviant or Different? Corporate Governance in Japan and Germany - Ronald DoreComparative Capitalisms, Ideational Political Economy and French Post-Dirigiste Responses to the Global Financial Crisis - Ben CliftIs the European Social Model Fragmenting? - John Grahl and Paul TeagueUnsustainable Employment Portfolios - John Buchanan, Gary Dymski, Julie Froud, Sukhdev Johal, Adam Leaver and Karel WilliamsThe Varieties of Capitalism and Hybrid Success: Denmark in the Global Economy - John Campbell and Ove PedersenFrom East-Asian ‘Miracle’ to Neo-liberal ‘Mediocrity’: The Effects of Liberalization and Financial Opening on the Post-crisis Korean Economy - James Crotty and Kang-Kook LeeWhy Social Democrats Become Neoliberals: Lessons from the Swedish Case - J. Magnus RynerWhat Kind of Capitalism for Russia? A Comparative Analysis - David LaneEnlarging the Varieties of Capitalism: The Emergence of Dependent Market Economies in East Central Europe - Andreas Nölke and Arjan VliegenthartThe Capitalist Business System of China and Its Rationale - Gordon ReddingVOLUME FOUR: CRITIQUES AND REVISIONS OF THE VARIETIES OF CAPITALISM PARADIGMThe Varieties of Capitalism Paradigm: Not Enough Variety? - Matthew AllenManifesto for a Post-Colonial International Business and Management Studies: A Provocation - R.I. Westwood and Gavin JackWhat about the Elephant in the Room? Varieties of Capitalism, Varieties in Capitalism - Ian BruffThe State of the Art: Towards a More Dynamic Theory of Capitalist Variety - Richard Deeg and Gregory JacksonStudying Comparative Capitalisms by Going Left and by Going Deeper - David CoatesLegal Professionals and Transnational Law-Making: A Case of Distributed Agency - Sigrid QuackInstitutional Work: Refocusing Institutional Studies of Organization - Thomas Lawrence, Roy Suddaby and Bernard LecaInstitutional Change in Varieties of Capitalism - Peter Hall and Kathleen ThelenPressure from Without, Subversion from Within: The Two-Pronged German Employer Offensive - Daniel KindermanGlobalisation, Skill Formation and the Varieties of Capitalism Approach - Hugh Lauder, Phillip Brown and David AshtonVarieties of Capitalism: Trajectories of Liberalization and the New Politics of Social Solidarity - Kathleen ThelenNeoliberalism and Its Implications for Management Practice - Alexander StyhrePrologue to the New Spirit of Capitalism - Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello