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The lack of systematic methods for reducing the complex reality has hampered many of the contributions that processual research might have produced. This paper presents a methodology for processual strategy research that offers a systematic approach for causal explanation across complex sequences of events and enables theorization about underlying causal mechanisms driving the processes. In addition, a comparative analysis of two organizational decline and turnaround processes is presented in order to illuminate how the methodology is able to generate a substantial advancement in knowledge by indicating the causal mechanisms underlying the decline and turnaround processes. The findings show that the turnaround is produced by four causal mechanisms that cumulatively and interdependently work against the mechanism of decline.

A growing body of literature suggests that unpredictable, resource-depleting shocks – ranging from natural disasters to public health crises and beyond – require the firm to respond adaptively. However, how firms do so remains largely undertheorized. To contribute to this line of literature, the authors borrow from the conservation of resources (COR) theory of stress and the dynamic capabilities perspective to introduce the concept of firm stress – a state of reduced and irregular readiness firms enter into following unpredictable, resource-depleting shocks. Our theoretical model illustrates that firms must punctuate the stress state to adapt by first deploying a retrenchment response, thereby conserving resources and allowing the firm to consider how to best redeploy its dynamic capabilities to adapt. Subsequently, the firm can redeploy its capabilities and adaptively respond in one of three ways: exiting (reconfiguring resources for alternative use), persevering (reconfiguring resources for better use), or innovating (developing new resources). Overall, the authors offer a process model of firm stress and adaptive responses following an unpredictable, resource-depleting shock that paves the way for future research on stress in the strategy literature.

Why do significant cultural anomalies frequently fail to generate change in institutional logics? Current process models offer a number of direct ways to enable the creation and diffusion of ideas and practices, but the resistance to adoption and diffusion, something so emphasized by the old institutionalism, has not been incorporated as directly in those models in a way that allows us to answer this question. Therefore, we theorize three retrenchment processes that impede innovation: cultural positioning, behavioral resistance, and feedback shaping. The ways in which these processes work are detailed in a case study of one high profile cultural anomaly: oil production and environmental management in Alberta’s oil sands from 2008 to 2011. Implications for the institutional logics perspective and understanding logics in action are discussed.

Welfare state retrenchment in advanced industrialized countries seeks to expand market-like logics in public services, based on the assumption that public services benefit from non-state initiative and competition. This logic gained a stronghold in policymaking, but its implementation nevertheless struggled to find acceptance. Public university tuition is one such case where policymakers aimed to increase investment in human capital through cost sharing. While students in some countries accept them as a necessary evil, opposition arises in others. Students in Germany and Turkey took to the streets in support of tuition-free higher education. Despite differences in their political contexts and the differential mediating role political culture plays, student mobilization reversed right-wing parties' policies. This article focuses on how opposition to tuition policies is covered by the news in both countries. Using a mixed-methods approach combining topic modeling with qualitative analysis, I show that student protests and tuition policy discussions are reported separately. In both countries, student protests involving confrontation were highlighted whereas reports on institutional actors dominated policy discussions. However, when movements pressure political parties to “own” an issue in their platform, party endorsement subsequently amplifies issue salience even if movement organizations and parties are not covered together by the media. This indicates an indirect effect of movements' collective action on news coverage. Political party endorsements mediate the amount of coverage movement issues receive. This finding provides insights into how opposition to welfare state retrenchment might navigate difficulties in closed media cultures that heavily favor institutional actors.

This chapter examines the issue of policy coordination as conceived by the Eurozone institutional setting. After having briefly recalled the meaning of fiscal and monetary policy coordination in the Keynesian and present paradigm, it describes the meaning of coordination inside the Eurozone: it emerges as a marked subordination of national fiscal policies to the objective of the stability of the common currency, in term of prices and interest rates. This feature generates two main fragilities to which the entire Euro Area is exposed: the first deriving from the role assigned to financial markets and the second one linked to the presence of external imbalances. Some reflections about the need to build up common policy institutions as a mean to grant stability and growth in the Eurozone are provided.

This chapter provides an account of the multi-dimensional injustices faced by public housing tenants in inner-city Salford; a contemporary, post-crash ‘austerity’ British city.

Two phases of qualitative empirical fieldwork were conducted by the author between 2003 and 2016 supplemented by documentary research and analysis of media articles released since 2009.

The empirical data presented demonstrates the challenges of living in partially gentrified, partially abandoned, semi-ensnared spaces. Salford is a city where ‘austerity’ has hit hard; where household incomes, social services and public housing tenancies have been undermined to such an extent that many live in extremely uncertain conditions. This has occurred against the backbeat of longer term restructuring where the state has been rolled back, out and back again at a bewildering rate, shunting residents from one logic of renewal and retrenchment to another.

This chapter looks beyond what can seem like linear accounts of restructuring within ‘planetary’ accounts of neoliberal urban transformation and recognizes the chaos of urban renewal and welfare state retrenchment in the global Northern urban periphery. In so doing, it argues we have a better platform for understanding the nuances of residents’ responses, resistances and relations on the ever-shifting ground.

Purpose – Since the mid-1980s, unemployment policy reforms in Europe and throughout the rich democracies have stressed publicly supported activation of the unemployed through both reductions in perceived disincentives to work as well as commitments for improved training, employment services, and related policies. In this chapter, I systematically explore the domestic and international political economic sources of these policy changes.

Methodology/approach – I test a set of hypotheses – original and derivative – about the domestic and international determinants of labor market policy change through pooled time-series cross-section analysis of 1980-to-2002 annual data from 18 capitalist democracies. The dependent variables consist of national spending on active labor market policy, measures of passive unemployment compensation benefits, and the ratio of active to passive unemployment program spending. Causal models account for spatial diffusion of policy reforms as well as core political and economic determinants of policy change.

Findings – I find that Left party governments and coordinated market institutions buoy resources for active labor market programs, maintain relatively generous passive unemployment supports and entitlements, and, at the same time, foster a shift to more active social policy. International trade openness promotes generous active labor market policies while more left-leaning voters and veto points within the polity significantly constrain reductions in unemployment benefits and entitlement rights. De-industrialization reinforces policy reforms toward activation while high unemployment rates engender cuts in passive unemployment benefits and eligibility conditions.

Originality/value – Overall, the chapter demonstrates that the economic effects on policy change notwithstanding, politics fundamentally matters: domestic political dynamics and variations in institutions explain the preponderance of the change (or lack thereof) in unemployment policy.

Purpose – European social protection arrangements have undergone significant transformations since the mid-1970s. However, while the existing literature has focused on reforms in public welfare arrangements, an analysis of both public and private social protection is needed to understand the social protection status of European workers. Recent reforms have led to varying degrees of social protection dualism between insiders and outsiders. After showing the existence of dualization processes in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, the chapter explores the structural and political sources of these processes.

Methodology/approach – We conduct a comparative historical analysis and process tracing of policy change and its drivers in three major European political economies. A combination of qualitative evidence and quantitative measurements are used.

Findings – We find that de-industrialization has contributed to unsettling the skill composition that sustained both public and private postwar social protection arrangements. This development has affected the preferences of employers, for whom cost containment has become a critical issue. Furthermore, we show that the capacity of employers to realize their preferences depends on the governance structures of social policy arrangements and on domestic political institutions.

Originality/value – The chapter suggests new perspectives on employers' preferences in Coordinated and Liberal political economies which differ from those which have informed the Varieties of Capitalism approach.

This paper explores the fragmented social policy choices imposed in Greece during the turbulent period 2010–2020. The institutional, political, and economic crisis brought in the enforcement of huge austerity reforms provoking deep socioeconomic devaluation: in GDP, in available income, in job opportunities, in living standards, in social protection. The decade is marked by a couple of mismatches diminishing welfare provision and mounting social need, inexpedient national administration, and unbalanced international intervention. A major cause of the national bankruptcy has been the stark imbalances of a residual social policy system which never aimed at tackling inequalities, challenging market outcomes, or fighting poverty. A fractured system distributing welfare according to individualistic/corporatist criteria, preserving a clientelistic/corrupting pattern, focusing upon an unfair/irrational pension provision. At a first sight, the urgent changes during the crisis have reinforced residualism, deregulated social/labor rights, reproduced inadequacies, exacerbated the discontinuities with the European Social Model. At a second reading, they have also recalibrated the system embracing elements of universality, unity, rationality, sustainability, and equity. In sum, the 2021 social policy starting point provides modest protection and keeps complexities, contradictions and controversies. The crisis imposed a welfare strategy of cuts that has produced less provision, stricter conditions, more harmony, dubious viability, dribs, and drabs of justice. The pandemic health crisis gives now prominence to the neglected but crucial role of the NHS and, in a broader sense, to the vital importance of institutionalised welfare provision.