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The 1990s brought a strong dominance of the US model of corporate governance, setting the continental European model at a disadvantage. Due to the financial crisis, the shareholder dominated Anglo‐American model has lost much of its evidence. The purpose of this paper is to try to come to terms with this development.

The paper compares the American model of corporate governance shaped by the idea of the capital market as the market for corporate control and the Continental European model shaped by the idea of consensual decisions and co‐determination of stakeholder groups. The paper uses as the main parameters the dominant features of both models, the capital market orientation in the case of the American and the consensus orientation in the case of the Continental European model and demonstrates the strengths and shortcomings of both models. It analyses the idea of the purpose of the firm and its impact on the formation of the legal and ethical rules of the corporation.

The paper finds that different concepts of the firm's purpose lead to different concepts of the firm, to a shareholder or a stakeholder concept of the firm. Basic models of philosophical theory like purpose, agency and consensus are used to describe foundational ideas of the theory of the firm.

The philosophical foundational concepts of the firm discussed in the paper add new insight to the discussion about corporate governance and allow a better understanding of the underlying models of corporate governance. They make the differences and the common features of the American and European models visible.

“All things are in a constant state of change”, said Heraclitus of Ephesus. The waters if a river are for ever changing yet the river endures. Every particle of matter is in continual movement. All death is birth in a new form, all birth the death of the previous form. The seasons come and go. The myth of our own John Barleycorn, buried in the ground, yet resurrected in the Spring, has close parallels with the fertility rites of Greece and the Near East such as those of Hyacinthas, Hylas, Adonis and Dionysus, of Osiris the Egyptian deity, and Mondamin the Red Indian maize‐god. Indeed, the ritual and myth of Attis, born of a virgin, killed and resurrected on the third day, undoubtedly had a strong influence on Christianity.

This paper aims to relate conceptually decent work and the economy for the common good describing the main contributions of the former to the latter.

This conceptual paper analyses the relationships between the values of the economy for the common good that have been explicitly stated and the psychological dimensions of the decent work concept.

Four conceptual propositions concerning the contributions of decent work to the economy for the common good are presented.

Because the four conceptual propositions were not submitted to empirical research, future studies are suggested.

The pursuit of decent work is aligned with the economy for the common good, which contributes to reinforcing both proposals.

Both decent work and the economy for the common good are synergistic and values-based approaches that consider the social system as a whole instead of proposing strategies to improve the competitive advantage of one over the other. This synergistic idea through cooperation contributes to overcoming the limitations of “business as usual”.

This is the first paper discussing the relationships between decent work and the economy for the common good.

The purpose of this article is to integrate the various strands of fair price research into a concise conceptual model.

The proposed price fairness model is based on a review of the fair pricing literature, incorporating research reported in not only English but also German.

The proposed fair price model depicts seven components of a fair price: distributive fairness, consistent behaviour, personal respect and regard for the partner, fair dealing, price honesty, price reliability, and influence/right of co‐determination.

Since buyers' purchase decisions are influenced by their subjective perception of price fairness, sellers need to understand what constitutes a fair price.

This model provides a concise representation of the multi‐dimensional concept of price fairness. It identifies aspects of a fair price which have hitherto received little research; for example, the need for personal respect for the partner and the right of co‐determination.

This paper aims to look at the past development and potential of the Rhenish capitalist governance “model”. The paper aims to discuss the origins and nature of the model. The main focus is on the model's in crisis and its specific role within the transformation processes of Central‐Eastern European economies. East‐Central Europe is where, it is contended, Rhineland capitalism's future will be decided.

Drawing on archival research (including current writings) the paper draws out two salient features of the Rhenish capitalist model which would be relevant to explore bank customers perceptions of bank governance and practice in the Polish‐German city of Zgorzelec‐Görlitz. The experience of Dresdner Bank is stressed and the fact that the local people not long before lived under a Socialist regime.

The paper contends that the abandonment of the social harmony structured into the Rhineland model would be a great pity, since the 100 years of effort it took to create it would go down the drain.

The paper ascertains the presence of German management traditions as opposed to Anglo‐American approaches to management in the context of retail bank markets in a border region.

This article is based on the report of a research study undertaken within Imperial Chemical Industries Limited (ICI) by my colleague Trevor Owen following my collaboration with John Appleyard of the Institute of Personnel Management in the preparation of an Introductory Information Report. None of us would claim to be experts on the European Economic Community (EEC), but being concerned about the development of industrial relations in the UK we share a conviction that the influence of Europe must be a factor of increasing importance in our forward planning.

Over the past 5–8 years most industrialised countries in Western Europe have experienced a rapid expansion of labour market regulations with a long list of new proposals awaiting legislation. In the field of education and training the rationale behind many of these anticipatory, preventive, corrective or otherwise named measures and planning instruments has been nurtured by two substantially different strands of thought: the economic notions of interrelationships between education, technology and economic growth on the one hand, and the use of educational reform for social policy purposes on the other. The impact of the former group has made itself felt in the enthusiasm and almost religious belief that more education is to be preferred to less, and that increases in the levels of schooling and training would be the panacea to economic growth and at the same time ease structural imbalances of labour markets. Industrial sociologists, political—and education—scientists, who on the other hand, were primarily concerned with the realisation of objectives such as equality of educational opportunities, industrial democracy and worker co‐determination or the humanisation of working conditions came basically to the same conclusion that more education for larger segments of the working population would be instrumental in achieving these objectives. Increased education, they argued, would give workers better starting chances, a larger mobility and flexibility potential, greater chances for promotion and more protection from the perils of structural change. Thus, while in the beginning a consensus existed on the desired directions of change in the field of education, as a subfield of active labour market policy, views very quickly diverged on the organisation and details of such changes; for example, what the proportions and roles of self‐regulating (market) forces as opposed to labour market interventions ought to be, whether monetary or non‐monetary control instruments would be more appropriate, how large and extensive the overhaul of the complete education system should be and what coincident or complementary measures were needed to make such proposals work in practice.

This paper focuses on the employment practices of both multinational corporations (MNCs) and large national competitors in the German fast‐food industry, such as Burger King, Pizza Hut, Nordsee, McDonald’s, Churrasco and Blockhaus. The paper poses a number of questions. Have the activities of MNCs affected the employment practices of national companies? Are companies adopting union exclusion policies and if so why and to what extent? Does the “country of origin effect” help explain the activities of MNCs? What changes are evident in workers’ terms and conditions and how effective are statutory systems of employee representation in practice? The findings suggest that Anglo‐Saxon‐based MNCs are more likely to adopt anti‐works council and non‐union policies in the sector, suggesting that MNCs may indeed be able to transfer their management practices across borders, imposing their employer‐based systems with little regard for German institutional arrangements.

Most scholarly and governmental discussions about artificial intelligence (AI) today focus on a country’s technological competitiveness and try to identify how this supposedly new technological capability will improve productivity. Some discussions look at AI ethics. But AI is more than a technological advancement. It is a social question and requires philosophical inquiry. The producers of AI who are software engineers and designers, and software users who are human resource professionals and managers, unconsciously as well as consciously project direct forms of intelligence onto machines themselves, without considering in any depth the practical implications of this when weighed against human actual or perceived intelligences. Neither do they think about the relations of production that are required for the development and production of AI and its capabilities, where data-producing human workers are expected not only to accept the intelligences of machines, now called ‘smart machines’, but also to endure particularly difficult working conditions for bodies and minds in the process of creating and expanding the datasets that are required for the development of AI itself. This chapter asks, who is the smart worker today and how does she contribute to AI through her quantified, but embodied labour?

Employees are considered as important contributors to service innovation, but the literature is not unanimous about what employee involvement in service innovation entails. To advance theoretical understanding of the topic, this paper develops a conceptual framework for analysing employee involvement in service innovations, reviews existing research on the topic and proposes a research agenda.

Different modes of employee involvement in service innovation are distinguished based on two dimensions: (1) the intensity of employee influence on service innovation and (2) the breadth of the innovation activity in which employees are involved. This conceptual framework is abductively developed through a literature review of empirical service innovation studies to identify and analyse whether and how these modes of employee involvement are manifested in the service innovation literature.

The findings delineate six modes of employee involvement in the reviewed service innovation studies. Employees are primarily seen as having a strong influence on situated innovation activities but a limited influence on systemic innovation activities. The findings show that more research is needed to assess the connections between different modes of employee involvement.

The findings can be used by practitioners to assess the possibilities different modes of employee involvement may bring to service innovation activities.

The proposed conceptual framework and the analysis of current research and research gaps in service innovation studies provide a clear research agenda for progressing multidimensional understanding of employee involvement in service innovation.