The Polanyi-Stanfield Contribution: Reembedded Globalization

This essay describes and interprets J. Ron Stanfield’s analysis of Karl Polanyi. Stanfield has helped to clarify Polanyi’s “double-movement” thesis by arguing that the double movement of self-regulating market forces and the protective response is essentially about freedom versus security. These insights provide an analysis that takes Polanyi into the twenty-first century by developing a theory of “reembedded globalization.” This is not something that Polanyi experienced before his death in 1964. Corporate globalization and the escalation of free-market rhetoric have led to a new round of disembedding since the 1970s, and this is evident by both the top-down, corporate globalization of privatization, deregulation, and marketization, as well as, by the challenges to it from the “movement of movements” coalescing around the World Social Forum. The most conspicuous evidence of this neo-protective response and its challenge to corporate-driven market forces is that between the security needs of the world’s globalization victims and the freedom of transnational corporations to make profits anywhere and in any way throughout the world. Understanding the clash in this way suggests that for humanity to save itself, it must struggle to reembed globalization and put security ahead of unbridled freedom. Reembedding globalization requires asserting democratic security ahead of the economic freedom of big business.     

Some effects of accounting expertise and information load: An empirical study

Effects of accounting expertise and information load upon predictions made from accounting reports were explored in a laboratory setting. Both greater expertise and lower information load (where achieved by increasing the processing time available) were associated with the placement of wider confidence intervals around predictions by subjects. These two variables also had systematic (though generally not statistically significant) effects upon the dispersion of predictions made by the subjects (auditors and students).     

Transnational worker representation and transnational training needs: the case of European works councils

The ongoing establishment of transnational information and consultation set in train by the European Works Council Directive of September 1994 is estimated to impact on approximately 25,000 employee representatives in some 1200 multinationals based in the EEA and beyond. This presents labour educators with enormous opportunities and challenges. Specific research questions which emerge in this context concern the extent to which such representatives have a set of generic and therefore transnational training needs in the area of skill, knowledge, and values/attitudes. Second, there is the extent to which existing methods of training needs identification are appropriate to detect and specify both individual and collective/organisational needs at this level. A third question concerns the prospects for transnational worker representatives to embed training needs analysis in their practice. This article attempts to shed some light on these questions. 1 This article is based on research made possible by the LEONARDO da VINCI programme funded by the EU commission. The LEONARDO programme supports the development supports the development of methodologies, materials and infastructure in the broad area of vocational training. The author would like to thank the partners for their assistance and critical comments in particular, Nick Clark (TUC,UK), Boudewijn Berentsen (FNV, Netherlands), Maria Irace (CISL, Italy), Jean Claud le Douaron (ETUCO, Brussels), Willi Derbogen (Arbeit und Leben, Germany), John Stirling, and Bob Mansfield, Prime Research and Development.