Insegnamento a.a. 2024-2025

30282 - GLOBALIZATION, SOCIETIES AND INSTITUTIONS

Department of Social and Political Sciences

Course taught in English

Class timetable
Exam timetable
Go to class group/s: 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 21 - 22
BIEF (2 credits - II sem. - OB) - BIEM (2 credits - II sem. - OB)
Course Director:
LUCIANO RENATO SEGRETO

Classes: 15 (II sem.) - 16 (II sem.) - 17 (II sem.) - 18 (II sem.) - 21 (II sem.) - 22 (II sem.)
Instructors:
Class 15: MARIO PERUGINI, Class 16: MARIO PERUGINI, Class 17: MARIO PERUGINI, Class 18: LUCIANO RENATO SEGRETO, Class 21: LUCIANO RENATO SEGRETO, Class 22: LUCIANO RENATO SEGRETO


Suggested background knowledge

The course will offer a critical approach to the different models of capitalism. General knowledge of business strategies, managerial organization and institutional relations between the business world, the market, the State, and its role as a regulator can help to understand the framework of the course, and it will permit the students to interconnect the different levels of analysis.

Mission & Content Summary

MISSION

One legacy of the present globalization is the fragmentation of the notion of “capitalism” into several national and supra-national models. Since 1989, capitalism is no longer considered a “monolith”, but a way of organizing economic activity, both at the macro-level and at the micro one. Different models of capitalism characterize different areas of the world and different models of enterprise and entrepreneurship. The main purpose of the seminar is to convey practical knowledge about how large companies are shaped and organized in different capitalist systems, in order to help students to orientate themselves in the very complex variety of business systems around the World.

CONTENT SUMMARY

1) General Introduction about the Varieties of Capitalism (VOC) debate. Relevant is also to discuss the different levels of performances, but also the different “concepts” of business goals and performance in different systems (e.g. short-term vs. long-term, etc.). VOC still coincides with a prevailing ownership structure among large companies (dispersed ownership vs. concentrated ownership and, inside concentrated ownership, different typologies of blockholders), but it presents also different ways to organize industrial relations. The State is a presence that can be active – stronger or weaker - in shaping the different models of capitalism.

2) Liberal Market Economies (Anglo Saxon Model). Characteristics of the Business System (Corporate economy, Financial System, Training, Industrial relations etc.); the relations between managers and shareholders in the listed companies.

3) Coordinated Market Economies (Continental Europe) will be analyzed with the versions of Germany (coordination without State), France (coordination with State as a component), and Southern Europe (Italy) with the enhanced role of the State in the process of coordination of the market exchange.

4) Is there a European Enterprise? Are national and supranational regulators (independent agencies, EU, etc.) producing a new European hybrid between the Liberal market economies and the Coordinated market economies? Is EU regulation “creating” a new European firm model, giving a huge series of rules about production standardization, production quality, industrial relations, CSR, ESG?

5) VOC in Asian Business Systems. Is there an Asian economic and business model, different? From the Chinese and Japanese ones? The role of national economic and business cultures, the emergence of the developmental States, and sectorial choices to gain success in the global competition.

6) Authoritarian Capitalism. One party system and authoritarian democracies are not so different and distant. Strategies and structures of SOEs. The role of private ntrepreneurs and their relations with political power.


Intended Learning Outcomes (ILO)

KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING

At the end of the course student will be able to...
  • Be familiar with the diversity of modern capitalist institutions.
  • Be familiar with current debates about different varieties of capitalism.
  • Understand different national models of capitalism and their consequences for economic welfare and political representation.
  • Understand how globalization, the ICT, and the Second Digital Revolution undermined differences between models of capitalism.

APPLYING KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING

At the end of the course student will be able to...
  • Demonstrate knowledge of the "varieties of capitalism" literature.
  • Critically assess the debates about institutions and economic performance.
  • Explain how strategies and structures of firm are shaped by economic and non-economic institutions.
  • Apply appropriate essay/report writing skills.

Teaching methods

  • Lectures
  • Guest speaker's talks (in class or in distance)
  • Collaborative Works / Assignments

DETAILS


Assessment methods

  Continuous assessment Partial exams General exam
  • Written individual exam (traditional/online)
    x
  • Collaborative Works / Assignment (report, exercise, presentation, project work etc.)
x    

ATTENDING STUDENTS

Attendance is compulsory and only a physical presence in the classrooms qualifies the attendance. In the first 6 meetings only one absence is admitted. In the last two meetings, when students’ presentations will take place, it is compulsory to attend at least the meeting scheduled for the presentation.

Attending students will prepare a presentation on a country or an issue considered during the lectures connected with the VOC models and their interaction with the globalization process. Topics can be proposed by the students and must require the agreement of the instructor. Teams composition and topics will be detailed in the syllabus.


NOT ATTENDING STUDENTS

Students' assessment is based on a written exam (100% of the final grade). The exam consists of: 

  1. Multiple-choice questions, aimed to test the basic knowledge of the "varieties of capitalism" literature and of the debates about the relationship between institutions and economic performance.
  2. Open-ended questions, aimed to assess students' ability to evalute how strategies and structures of firms are shaped by a given institutional framework.

Teaching materials


ATTENDING STUDENTS

Articles from newspapers and economic magazines and papers will be put at disposal before the lectures to permit the development of discussions and debates


NOT ATTENDING STUDENTS

- Varieties of capitalism. The institutional foundations of comparative advantages, edited by Peter A. Hall and David Soskice, Oxford, 2001

- Beyond varieties of capitalism, edited by Bob Hancké, Martin Rhodes and Mark Thatcher, Oxford 2008;

- Debating varietes of capitalism, eduted by Bob Hancké, Oxford, 2009

Last change 04/12/2024 16:18