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While the attempt to integrate the Russian economy into global capitalism has produced several market‐oriented economic institutions that formally appear to converge with those in the advanced industrial West, ‘globalization’ has had far less of an impact on the prevalent norms and attitudes of key economic factors at the local and regional level where many of the most successful enterprises are focusing their energies. This chapter may be summarized in terms of three tentative claims designed primarily to raise some questions concerning the prevailing assumptions concerning the nature and direction of the post‐Soviet transformation. First, the privatization program and other market‐oriented reforms under Yeltsin, while certainly ushering in a new set of institutions in the post‐Soviet era, do not represent a steady, unidirectional process of change leading towards the integration of Russia into the global economy and society. Second, the framework of ‘globalization’ works even less to capture the transformation of industrial relations in the post‐Soviet period, as evident in the failed attempt to develop a tripartite corporatist framework for bargaining on key issues, and in the increasing evidence of bilateral dealings and alliances between pro‐ and anti‐reform segments that cut across the business/labour divide and contact between government officials and the most influential trade unions and business associations across different regions. And finally, while the old system of industrial relations may not be much in evidence today, a substantial number of industrialists and Russian workers appear to be responding to the transformation of the post‐Soviet economy by focusing on regionally based, enterprise‐level survival strategies nested in informal ‘moral’ understandings that emerged in the context of enterprise paternalism in the Soviet era and that continue to survive within the context of new economic institutions.

This chapter examines the more recent history of business associations' political context, organization, and orientations. Against the background of findings from earlier studies, the chapter presents a new analysis of the organizational features and major orientations of the contemporary association population. They are, overall, well established, multifunctional—and weakly organized. The chapter argues that these features mean they are, first and foremost, cultural producers for economic action.

This chapter focuses on how business associations in Australia engage in public policy analysis and how this role has evolved over recent decades. Business associations in Australia are voluntary associations that rely on subscriptions from member firms or subordinate associations to pursue their roles. They range from industry-specific or sectoral associations servicing or representing a particular industry, to broader cross-sectoral or umbrella associations. This chapter explores the rise of policy analysis and RBA by business associations in Australia, focussing initially on the role of the Business Council of Australia and then on other major national business associations.Issues explored include the challenges of policy analysis, how business associations see their role in this field, and how in operating in this arena they relate to governments and to other business associations and stakeholders.

This chapter first sketches Max Weber's theory of business associations, highlighting issues of organizational form, cultural orientation, and political process. This perspective shapes social scientists' main assumptions about why and how business associations function, especially for scholars of comparative economic governance. Their comparative approach shows the distinctiveness of American associations, which is demonstrated here with brief contrasts to German and Japanese associational history. This Weberian comparative approach generates a major theoretical and empirical anomaly: it cannot explain why American associations thrive. To explore this issue, the chapter reconstructs the history of American business associations before and after the introduction of antitrust law in the late nineteenth century, again considering that history in terms of their organization, orientation, and politics.

One of the most common assumptions about American business associations is that they are simply political interest groups. This chapter discusses sociological arguments for this assumption and shows how the evidence of political orientations and activities in the association census and the focal groups challenges these arguments as partial and unrepresentative. Then, focusing on that minority of associations that are indeed active in conventional politics, it examines what exactly they do and the terms in which they understand their political action. The chapter argues that they are mostly involved in routine policy monitoring as peripheral players in policy domains. Then, extending recent arguments about American political discourse, it shows how they express their political interests in terms of a democratic code stressing technical reason and the stewardship of the common good. These arguments are demonstrated with illustrations drawn from the focal sample and an extended case analysis of the political work of the Irrigation Association.

This chapter amplifies the findings about business associations' political orientations, strategies of action, and vocabularies of motive. It examines their publicly oriented languages and strategies of action beyond conventional politics. First, it assesses scholarly assumptions about associations' interest in public opinion with evidence from the census, and explores strategies of action and discourse about public relations in the focal sample. Then it points out that although scholars interested in nonprofit voluntary groups and civil society have ignored business associations, these groups should also be considered in debates about the strength of civil society. The chapter assesses evidence of orientations to civic goals in the business association population and explores qualitative evidence of associations' strategies of action and vocabularies of motive that challenges the distinction between economy and civil society. Attempts to influence public opinion and to participate in civil society are usually understood in languages of public good, especially stewardship of the public good through technical expertise. An extended case study, of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers, demonstrates these claims.

This chapter investigates how strategies of action are connected to profit maximization and industry stability. After outlining standard theoretical assumptions about the pursuit of economic interests in associations, the chapter discusses new findings from the population census and from the focal sample about what exactly national business associations do in this large arena of economic action. It then turns to an analysis of the meanings attributed to these strategies of action. The chapter analyzes how association discourse resolves potential contradictions between particular and collective economic interests, questioning standard solutions scholars have proposed to the Olsonian puzzle of “free riding” in associations. Finally, the chapter discusses cases in the focal sample in which associations pursue tactics oriented to protecting collective “industry” economic interests in the politicized coordination of industry change.

This chapter builds on the insights of neoinstitutionalist theory, which has suggested a cultural role for business associations in the production and reproduction of “industry interests.” Arguing that recent neoinstitutionalist analysis has been overly preoccupied with questions about change and relies on unexamined assumptions about how orientations for economic action are reproduced and inculcated, the chapter shows how business associations routinely produce and reproduce cognitive categories, networks, and industry fields. This account also shows that recent work by economic sociologists on the importance of cognition, networks, and fields for economic action helps understand mechanisms of institutional production and reproduction.

This chapter explores the standard neoinstitutionalist account, arguing that it borders on circularity if it relies on the putative prior existence of shared interests and it underestimates the degree to which associations treat solidarity as an end in itself. Building on neglected theories of occupational community, this chapter shows that a surprisingly widespread theme in business associations' activity and discourse expresses collective identities, normative and status orders, and camaraderie that would make little sense strictly considered as strategic economic action. An important part of what American business associations do is produce solidarity in collective identity. The chapter offers a new and counterintuitive view of American business associations and the cultural embeddedness of capitalist economic action. The picture of the solidarity in business challenges several fundamental assumptions about capitalist economic action. It challenges the broad assumption that all there is to business is strategic, self-interested action.

This chapter presents a case study which shows how a business association (Almega) assists member-firms in achieving agency in relation to the independent spheres of politics and markets, and how it configures them as collective actors in those spheres or more precisely, as agencements. First, the business association provided detailed guidance as to how member-firms should act in the separate spheres. In relation to markets, Almega's employees developed models and sometimes disciplined the members into acting in the interest of the association, or even in the interest of future members of the association. Secondly, member firms and associations within Almega were grouped together into various temporary agencements that could act within the political sphere. The combined actions resulted in dual agency since Almega (as an association) and its members were configured differently in relation to the political and economic spheres.

This chapter provides an overview of the knowledge gained about business culture and American business associations, and what that means for our understanding of contemporary economic life. Forms of disinterested solidarity, as well as self-interest, are intrinsic in orientations to economic action even of capitalist business. Solidarity grounded in the technical division of labor exists as a critical potential within capitalist economic activity. This is what critical theorists used to call a “cultural surplus,” a shared normative grounding for claims-making in favor of institutions of production and exchange that might turn self-interested strategy to more encompassing solidarity. In view of this cultural surplus, assuming that economic action grounded on a norm of strategic, self-interested exchange is a transparent and immutable fact of life is ultimately more dangerous than investigating disinterest and exploring the conditions of its creation in solidaristic institutions.

When and why have employers supported the development of institutions of social insurance that provide benefits to workers for various employment‐related risks in the areas of unemployment insurance, accident insurance, and early retirement? This paper challenges the dominant explanations of welfare state development premised on the assumption of business opposition to social insurance. It examines the conditions under which firms support the introduction of a new social policy and specifies the most important variables explaining the variation in the social policy preferences of employers. The model is tested in three episodes of social policy development in Germany, relying on a collection of archival sources and policy documents submitted by business associations to bureaucratic and parliamentary commissions.

Although union membership is not directly linked with collective bargaining, collective bargaining in Germany can be associated with the decline of organized labor and capital or neocorporatism in general. Membership to such unions was not compulsory and became voluntary even in firms covered by a collective agreement. Through the years the percentages of union members in the German workforce shifted. The level of trade union membership was pushed down to less than one-fifth of the workforce in 2003. In addition, membership in employer and business associated unions has evidently declined as well. This is because firms which employ association members only are formally bound by sectoral negations unlike in the case of unions, membership in employer associations directly affects whether an employee is covered by collective agreements or not. This chapter discusses the implications of declining membership in such associations for the tensions between both small and large firms in Germany.

This chapter analyzes the fact that intraindustry strategies of action are just as frequently seen in a more disinterested way as a matter of technical excellence and “professionalism.” It shows businesspeople preoccupied with issues generated by the technical division of labor—the intrinsic technical features in an arena of production or line of work. Few scholars have taken account of the fact that business associations are as likely to be oriented to their members' interests in “professionalism” as they are to their collective business interests. The chapter argues that the theoretical distinctions usually made between “professions” and other work worlds cannot be sustained. The argument concludes with an extended illustration from the International Society of Certified Electronics Technicians.

This chapter gives an overview. It defines chambers of commerce and the related bodies studied in lesser detail: chambers of trade, trade protection societies, chambers of agriculture, and how these interface with sector and national organizations. It shows how primary historical, economic, and political analysis is combined to give statistical overviews, highlighting local contingency, personality, and the geography of place—to explain why chambers are, and were, where they are: to define their Unique Selling Point (USP). It also shows how analysis of management and member choices is combined to understand how chambers have been used, managed, and valued. It introduces the wide range of local and national archives employed, explaining how historical data have been aligned.

Since the 1980s, policy advisory systems in Canada have become more open and accessible to inputs from civil society groups. However, the capacity to exploit this new openness is not evenly distributed within civil society. Based on survey data from Canadian business associations, this chapter argues that business groups have generally endowed themselves with impressive capacities for policy analysis and advice, and that these capacities have increased over the last decade or so. Business associations have commonly made a significant and sustained commitment to this endeavour, whether using in-house personnel or external resources, and have developed strong analytical means for providing governments with policy advice. To the extent that this capacity is unmatched by other sections of civil society, the greater openness of policy advisory systems may not reflect a new era of genuine pluralism, but reinforce existing biases in civil society.

Roman businessmen eager to launch a joint business venture could choose among three legal forms: the societas, the societas publicanorum, and the peculium of a commonly held slave. None of these forms led to large capital associations, let alone business corporations with publicly traded shares. The high level of instability is one of the key explanations: under Roman law, it was virtually impossible to commit capital for the long term and finance capital-intensive enterprises. The societas was inevitably liquidated following numerous dissolution events; its members could withdraw their money at any time; and private creditors were not barred from seizing common assets. The peculium was even more unstable: In addition to the dissolution events of the societas, the joint venture came to an end and all peculium items reverted back to the masters when the commonly held slave died. While the societas publicanorum developed into a more stable institution over time, during the same period, its business almost disappeared as state authorities stopped putting capital-intensive projects out to tender. How can a modern reader make sense of the picture that emerges from the sources? The present chapter suggests that reservations in the social and political setting, rather than economic factors or oddities of Roman legal doctrine, caused business associations to remain small. This is an important lesson from history, both for the theory of the firm and for the role that law plays in it.