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We address here how the U.S. neoliberal policy regime developed and how its reconstructed vision of modernization, which culminated, under the rubric of globalization, was neutralized by 9/11 and neoconservative geopolitics. We analyze the phases in the rise of neoliberalism, and provide a detailed map of its vision of global modernization at its high tide under Clinton. We also address how the Bush Doctrine's unilateral, preemptive polices and the consequent War on Terror and Iraq War eroded U.S. legitimacy as the globalization system's hegmon and shifted the discourse from globalization to empire. Cold War modernization theorists, neoliberal globalization advocates, and Bush doctrine neoconservatives all drew on an American exceptionalist tradition that portrays the U.S. as modernity's “lead society,” attaches universal significance to its values, policies, and institutions, and urges their worldwide diffusion. All three traditions ignore or diminish the importance of substantive equality and social justice. We suggest that consequent U.S. policy problems might be averted by recovery of a suppressed side of the American tradition that stresses social justice and holds that democracy must start at home and be spread by example rather than by exhortation or force. Overall, we explore the contradictory U.S. role in an emergent post-Cold War world.

In this study, I explore the link between workforce downsizing and the predominance of a corporate governance model that espouses a shareholder value maximization principle. Specifically, I examine how top managers’ shareholder value orientation affects the adoption of a downsizing strategy among large, publicly traded corporations in the United States. An analysis of CEOs’ letters to shareholders indicates that firms with CEOs who use language that espouses the shareholder value principle tend to have a higher rate of layoffs, after controlling for various indicators of the firm’s adherence to the shareholder value principle. The finding suggests that corporate governance models, particularly those advocated by powerful organizational elites, have a significant impact on workers by shaping corporate strategies toward the workforce. The key actors in this process were top managers who embraced the new management ideology and implemented corporate strategy to pursue shareholder value maximization.

As a company that has continuously achieved business innovation, Apple in the United States has successfully applied strategic knowledge creation to produce a series of products that integrate various digital devices as well as diverse contents and applications, such as the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, based on a corporate vision of a digital hub concept. At the same time, the redefining of corporate boundaries that expanded Apple’s business in a horizontal direction from the Macintosh PC business to the delivery of music, smartphones, and tablets is also an indication of the evolution of a corporate vision involving Apple’s strategic transformation. This chapter presents the strategic and creative processes that enabled practitioners, including the late Steve Jobs, to demonstrate “strategic innovation capability” by “holistic leadership” at every level of management at Apple and successfully achieve a business ecosystem strategy through “creative collaboration” across diverse boundaries within and outside the company.

During recent years, financial economists have made a significant contribution to the rapid development of a vibrant and growing literature on organization structure and corporate governance. In reviewing the development of this literature, it becomes easy to see how the seminal contributions of Ronald Coase (awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1991) have become the cornerstone of a new institutional economics. In particular, researchers following in Coase’s footsteps have clarified the conditions under which voluntary contracts between private agents can resolve a wide variety of so-called “agency problems.” More than just representing an important discovery of the significance of transaction costs and property rights for the institutional structure and functioning of the economy, Coase’s work has become an important foundation for the theory of contracts and for the whole field of “organization economics.”

The debate about corporate purpose is a recurring one that has re-emerged today. What should be the guiding principles of business: the pursuit of profit or a contribution to public interest? We trace key elements in this debate in Britain and America, from the interwar years, when John Maynard Keynes and Adolf Berle made important contributions, to the 1970s, when events ushered in a return to laissez-faire and the rise to dominance of the shareholder primacy model of corporate governance and purpose, to today. Both the earlier and the current debates are centered around whether we see business institutions as strictly private entities, transacting with their suppliers, workers, and customers on terms agreed with or imposed upon these groups, or as part of society at large and therefore expected to contribute to what society deems to be its interests. Whether current developments will ultimately produce a shift in corporate purpose akin to the one that followed the Second World War remains to be seen. But the parallels to the interwar debates, and the uncertain economic, political, and social environments in which they took place, are striking. Our objective is to see what might be learned from the past to inform the current direction of thought concerning capitalism and corporate purpose.

This paper contributes to the literature of accountability and ethics by providing historical perspective by way of archival discovery of original, primary documentation as to corporate practices and behaviors of an early major U.S. corporation during the period 1849–1862. The authors provide the results of examination and analysis of surviving corporate records.

The challenges to appropriate behavior and the application of stewardship principles with regard to the custody of property and the sanctions imposed for transgressions are all identified from primary corporate documents and hand-written minutes books of the board of directors of the Mobile & Ohio Railroad during the period. The de facto development of a corporate code of conduct enumerated by the board provides an early example of explicit corporate governance guidance. This unique discovery informs contemporary understanding of ethical issues identified in the accountability literature by adding the perspective of management experiences from over 150 years ago.

In this tribute to Randy Hodson, I will demonstrate how the defining concept of his research – that “life demands dignity and meaningful work is essential for dignity” (Hodson, 2001, p. 3) – has led me to fundamentally reinterpret much of my earlier fieldwork, principally represented in Managing in the Corporate Interest: Control and Resistance in an American Bank (Smith, 1990) and Crossing the Great Divide: Worker Risk and Opportunity in the New Economy (Smith, 2001). I then suggest that we add a fifth condition to his formulation of challenges to dignity. Hodson identified four: management abuse, overwork, limits on autonomy, and contradictions of employee involvement. The framework needs to be contextualized within the fifth major challenge of our times: the broader environment of employment precariousness under neoliberalism that has deeply affected our micro-experiences at work, including those singled out by Hodson.

Gender remains a politically charged and powerful ideological social identity dimension that categorically essentializes and reproduces opportunities and limitations in organizations. Addressed in Chapter 6 are assumptions about gender and ways that gender classifications and gender roles form and spill forth into both work and home life for an overlap of public and private spheres that disadvantage women and privilege men. Furthermore, femininity and masculinity constructs strengthen the power system that undergirds them, reinforces their meanings, and perpetuates behaviors, changing over time, across and within cultures, and over the life course.

In organizations, the glass ceiling metaphor has become a popular representation of inequality in the workplace for women, people of color and sexual minorities; a phenomenon expanded in recent years to include glass walls and glass cliffs to describe advancement barriers. Gender-neutral mindsets and blame-the-victim strategies found in organizations are examined, as well as the breadwinner role and intersectionalities of gender with social identity dimensions of age, ethnicity, and social class. Chapter 6 is divided into these subthemes: gender, roles, femininity, and masculinity; power and gender inequality at work, and effects on women; gender, parenting, and the second shift; the breadwinner role, hegemonic masculinity, and masculinity in crisis; gendered occupations and feminization of career fields; intersectionalities of gender with age, ethnicity, and social class; and shattering schemas with androgyny and transgenderism.

This paper uses data on over 4,600 layoff announcements in the U.S., covering each firm that ever existed in the Fortune 500 between 1970 and 2000, along with 40 interviews of senior managers in 2001 and 2002 to describe layoffs in large U.S. firms over this period. In order to motivate further work in the area, I investigate six main issues related to layoffs: timing of layoffs, reasons for layoffs, the actual execution of layoffs, international workers, labor unions, and the types of workers by occupation and compensation categories. The paper draws on literature from many fields to help further understand these issues.