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Introduces a special issue on globalization and the welfare state. Asserts that economic globalization constrains national economic and social policy far more now than ever before, although the level of international trade has not increased that much compared to levels at the beginning of this century. Talks about the political consequences of economic globalization, particularly welfare state retrenchment in the advanced capitalist world. Outlines the papers included in this issue – comparing welfare system changes in Sweden, the UK and the USA; urban bias in state policy‐making in Mexico; and the developing of the Israeli welfare state. Concludes that economic globalization has a limited effect in shaping social welfare policy in advanced capitalist countries; nevertheless, recommends further research into which aspects of economic globalization shape social welfare policy.

The paper aims to reveal how the Chinese government has tried to regulate transnational cultural flows by applying cultural policies.

The paper compares the dissemination of different foreign television programmes in China since the 1980s. The documents of cultural policy released since 1990s, news reports and the statistics of imported dramas since 2000s will be analyzed.

The research finds that the Chinese government has treated cultural products from different countries in unequal ways. Political-diplomatic relationships and the need for ideological control, influence the making of cultural policy. Restricting the quota of imported dramas, censorship and propaganda are measures taken by the Chinese government to regulate transnational cultural flows.

The paper mainly focuses on platforms such as state-owned television stations and internet. The role of pay-cable channel in disseminating imported dramas should be taken into consideration in the future research.

The paper provides a systematic understanding on the development of Chinese cultural policy.

The paper offers an alternative approach to explore the policy-oriented dissemination of transnational cultural flows other than market-oriented dissemination.

The purpose of this paper is to examine corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues in the context of the hospitality industry and offer some avenues for future research.

The paper reviews several domains of CSR and takes stock of some exemplar research from hospitality management pertaining to each domain. Particular note is taken of research that explores CSR issues outside the Western world. Several unanswered questions are then noted along with suggestions for future research.

Based on prior literature, four CSR domains were identified as instrumental, social/legal/political, ethical and environmental. CSR issues in hospitality research have predominantly focused on the instrumental domain while there is scant research on other domains. CSR adoption in the multinational context was identified as due from stakeholder pressures, competitive environment and cultural environment.

The paper identifies some unanswered questions in transnational operations of hospitality firms and suggests avenues for future research.

The paper recommends that due attention must be given to contextual issues in the conceptualization, focus and practice of CSR by multinational hospitality firms.

The paper offers a review of hospitality research on various CSR domains. It offers some unanswered research questions that may spur future research, discussion and debates among academics, students and executives.

With a particular focus on cultural understandings and the concepts behind welfare policies, the purpose of this paper is to analyse commonalities and dissimilarities in the patterns of social policy, and more precisely youth unemployment policies, in Sweden and Germany.

A document analysis of Swedish and German youth unemployment policies was conducted with regard to how the two welfare regimes’ policies define the underlying problem, the instruments through which this problem is tackled, and the aim of youth activation policies.

The findings show congruency concerning the definitions of the problem of youth unemployment, in which the unemployed are regarded as lacking in discipline, as well as in the policies through which the problem is tackled: through conditionality and pastoral power as policy tools. The solution of the problem on the other hand, found in the notion of the ideal worker to be produced, diverges between active entrepreneurs in one country, and blue-collar workers in the other. The authors conclude that the introduction of supranational policy concepts is not a matter of mere implementation, and that concepts like activation are reinterpreted according to differing cultural ideologies and accommodated into the context of particular welfare states.

This paper provides an innovative framework for the understanding of the influence of cultural understandings on policy making, but also on challenges facing activation governance on the one hand and European Union policy initiatives and transnational policy diffusion on the other.

The purpose of this paper is to present a comparative case study of national innovation system in Canada and Sweden from the perspective of gender equality. The case study focuses on public policy to illuminate the formal aspects of innovation systems as they are conceived by the state in relation to gender, diversity and social inclusion. Formal policy measures are contrasted with interview data to provide a holistic picture of innovation policy as it relates to gender equality in both countries.

This paper relies on data from 44 qualitative interviews with innovation leaders in the public sector, private sector and academia in Canada and Sweden, as well as a sample of innovation and gender experts at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in Paris, France, between 2012 and 2014. The theoretical framework draws on feminist institutionalism to explain the gendered interactions of institutions in innovation spaces.

This study finds that Sweden is a global policy leader in the development of gender-conscious innovation policy, while Canada has yet to consider a gender-conscious approach to innovation policy. Gender-conscious innovation policy norms have not traveled across the OECD because of administrative solos and political opportunity structures.

Each of the people contacted to sit for an interview was chosen primarily on their professional title and their ability to speak from a place of knowledge about innovation in their country and or industry, and this creates a success bias within the study focusing on the knowledge of elites in the field.

This study explores how policy might be reimagined to support gender equality and diversity, thus changing the institutional landscape to support a wider range of innovations and distributing the benefits of innovation in a more equitable way.

This paper challenges assumptions about the social and economic power dynamics reflected in current innovation systems in Canada and Sweden.

This is the first study of its kind in comparative public policy to explore differences in gender equality and innovation policy in Canada and Sweden. This research also contributes more widely to the existing body of gender, public policy and innovation literatures in Canada and Sweden, respectively.

The prestigious policy advisor, World Economic Forum (WEF), underlines that “governments, businesses and civil society organisations” must find “new ways of tackling the systemic risks that affect us all”. Paradoxically, policy’s and politicians’ great trust in the basic forces of the business world is accompanied with a disinterest in how they are captured in analytical approaches. The purpose of this paper is to discuss what consequences different approaches to interaction present for policy attempts to use business forces to achieve change.

The discussion of theoretical approaches available for policy aiming to use the basic forces of business exchange for efficiency, innovation and industrial/societal renewal in specific directions is designed as follows: The authors identify two main choices of dimensions in the conceptualisation of business exchange, based on the acknowledgement of thin or thick interactions. The authors discuss how these are related to how interaction patterns appear in empirical studies of exchange. Based on the identification of conceptualisations and empirical findings, the authors discuss the ability for the public sphere to use the basic characteristics of business exchange to cope with societal challenges.

Research experiences on thick interaction and its consequences, that businesses and their input and output are interdependent, systemic and promote certain development paths, are largely ignored in approaches used in policy circles. Instead, policy advisors’ and policy commissioners’ understanding of business interaction patterns is coloured by mainstream economies assumption of thin interaction. The content and function of the market as depicted in this tradition are within EU, the basic foundation for legal regulations and limitations of businesses interaction patterns. Simply put, actors as well as the activities and resources that they are related to are approached as independent.

This paper is focussed on the conceptual underpinnings of contemporary policy advices and commissions. This paper does not investigate deviations from these advices and commission made by policy practitioners on a local level

The message given by theoretical approaches recognising thick interaction is that the thicker it is, the more intervening, broader and more differentiated the policy tools and measures have to be. But that also puts high demands on policy actors on all levels to have both general and specific knowledge about thick interaction patterns. However, given the big challenges the society is facing, increased speed of change and, above all, increased influence over the direction of change are needed.

WEF recognises the systemic features of the contemporary challenges to society with climate change in the foreground, and it stresses the need for finding new ways for public bodies and private businesses to cooperate to solve this. This implies the need to consider what theoretical approaches that should guide policy advice and measures. Hence, there is a need for the use of more sophisticated analytical approaches to the collective level, instead of those relying on that the interaction pattern of the business world is thin, straightforward and easy manageable.

This paper takes a novel approach to policy advice and policy commissions through focussing on what kind of theoretical concepts and approaches that actually are available for policy advisors and policy commissioners interested in using the basic forces of business exchange to increase efficiency and innovation in the public setting in general and furthermore to solve specific problems and to create new, specific development paths. Hence, both approaches adopted and neglected by policy are considered.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the politicisation of age discrimination in relation to the enactment of anti-discrimination legislation in Finland and Sweden in the early-2000s. By showing how politicians constructed the meaning of age discrimination, it seeks to highlight the drivers of country variation in terms of the implementation of directives from the European Union (EU).

The paper uses a comparative design based on content analyses of parliamentary documents. Theoretically, it uses discursive institutionalism as a starting point but it also builds on previous research/theories on age discrimination.

The findings show that although age was seen as a ground for discrimination in both countries, there was surprisingly little debate about discrimination as societal problem. There was however considerable differences between the countries suggesting that age discrimination was a much more heated subject in Sweden.

Although the analysis focuses on a small part of the policy-making process it highlights drivers (such as political culture) that may cause variation in the ways age discrimination is politicised, even within similar welfare state regimes. It also suggests that more research is needed to fully understand such drivers.

The paper presents examples that can help analysts and the public to deconstruct institutionalised practices of age discrimination and thereby to understand how age discrimination practices may prevail in society.

By analysing the ways in which age discrimination was constructed as a problem within national policy-making frameworks, the paper presents valuable insights as to the sources of country variation in relation to the implementation of EU directives.

The purpose of this paper is to document the influence of policy transfer on integrated care development, its global occurrence and shifts towards integrated care. It highlights the influence of supranational forces, and the roles and relevance of policy transfer and policy translation in the development of integrated care.

This paper presents the findings of an international review of the policy transfer of integrated care, and the relevance of policy translation in integrated care development.

The global occurrence in integrated care, as evinced in this paper, can be seen in the global shift towards integrated care in various countries. However, studies exploring the actual mechanism of policy transfer and policy translation in relation to integrated care across countries are limited. The study of integrated care through the lens of policy transfer is important, as it for example, explores the structural elements, including environmental and cognitive obstacles in the policy transfer process. Policy translation offers a social constructivist approach to explore the travel of ideas, and considers the multiple spatial and scalar contexts in which integrated care policy is implemented.

This paper aims to advance policy transfer and policy translation as complementary frameworks to explain integrated care development. Second, it seeks to make novel and useful contributions to the debate about the development of integrated care, and to the wider arguments on policy transfer and policy translation and integrated care in other parts of the world.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Drawing on evidence of major Western governments’ concerns with the wider economic, social and environmental impact and performance of transnational firms, we argue that recent emphasis on deregulating industrial development, such as in the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment and ongoing discussions over a multilateral framework on investment, necessitates a fuller and regulated, rather than voluntaristic, corporate accountability, covering further details of the impact and performance of transnationals.