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This paper sets out to review the sociological perspective on the changing role of managers in US corporations following the demise of Fordist hierarchies.

The paper reviews literature on how changing managerial prerogatives altered the control of the workplace, and provides a theoretically informed assessment of the current impasse.

The post‐Second World War decades saw sustained economic growth that was predicated on an employment relationship in which managers and workers had relatively secure career ladders within firms and were provided with regular pay increases. The changing competitive environment in the 1980s altered this relationship: traditional hierarchical structures were increasingly subject to internal market forces, and organizations supplanted and supplemented their operations with network forms.

The paper shows how workplace changes increased insecurity for managers by questioning the traditional operation of that role within organizations; though simultaneously, these changes served to enhance features of overall organizational efficiency and equalize opportunity for career advancement.

This paper examines the late 20th Century emergence of wineries in North Carolina, using the concepts of clusters and industrial policy to explain the dynamics of entrepreneurship in an embryonic industry. Specific attention is paid to how changing resource conditions (available agricultural land and financial capital) interact with an entrepreneurial climate that has fostered individual interest in winemaking to precipitate institutional changes that consolidate cluster formation. Using a model of small business growth in which firms gain credibility through identification with a cluster we trace the success of key wineries in this geographic region.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the changing competitive landscape in the wine industry, focusing upon how premium Napa valley producers are responding to such changes.

The in depth interview technique with 11 privately owned premium wine producers was used, with interviews conducted in early 2005.

Wineries identify the growing concentration and consolidation amongst distributors and domestic US producers; increased foreign competition, particularly from Australia; and the trend towards homogenised taste following the increased power of numerical wine ranking surveys as principal concerns that they face.

The findings highlight the dilemmas faced by wineries as they attempt to stress their locational advantage for reputation building but endeavour to differentiate their product from other wineries in Napa.

As a pilot project the paper indicates how even firms in high value added product markets are facing heightened competition and what they fear might emerge in the near future from foreign producers.