After the Decline of Large U.S. Corporations: Where Do the New Giants Come from?

By Stephan Manning.

The latest Forbes 2000 Rankings leave no doubt: Large corporations continue to exist (and they grow even larger), but fewer than ever originate in the U.S. Among the Top 10 listed firms (in terms of sales, profits, assets, and market value) four are Chinese – including the first and second ranked Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and China Construction Bank. So is it really true that large corporations are collapsing, as Gerald Davis and Israel Drori suggest in their provocative article? Or are we simply witnessing the declining relevance of U.S.-based firms? Should we, in turn, just focus on the continuous power of Western multinationals in global production networks, as David Levy suggests in his related post, or is there another important dynamic: the gradual but certain shift of gravity from U.S., European and Japanese firms to new giants from BRIC countries – China, India, Russia and Brazil – and other emerging economies?

Spotlight on Meritocracy: Does Charity Need to Pay More for Top Talent?

By Michelle Kweder, Maureen Scully and Gerald Denis.

Recently, a TED Talk by Dan Pallotta set the blogosphere on fire, with a hopeful call for how non-profits can ramp up to a new level of operations and impact.  Many people were inspired that the non-profit sector was at last being seen for its worthiness and bigger potential.  But some people worried about what sounded like corporatizing the non-profit sector – in a world where corporatization has yielded many of the societal problems that non-profits are now left to mop up.

Tech support en français s’il vous plaît!? The challenges of becoming a new global outsourcing hub

By Stephan Manning.

Outsourcing of IT, tech support and other business services has become a global trend. Watching India’s success in the outsourcing space, many developing countries now try to grow their own business service economy. Even African countries, including South Africa, Egypt, Morocco, Ghana, and Mauritius, have built up outsourcing capabilities in recent years (see recent article by Abbott). In fact, 8 out of the Top 100 outsourcing destinations worldwide, according to the latest 2013 Tholons Ranking, are located in Africa. Not surprisingly, Kenya’s government for example also lists business process outsourcing (BPO) as a major economic building block in their Vision 2030. Boasting an improved IT infrastructure, political stability and English language capabilities, Kenya is hoping to become a major BPO hub. Other countries are following suit. But what does it really take to become a global outsourcing hub? Can any country with low-cost labor, a good IT infrastructure and favorable business climate join the club?

Corporate Power in an Age of Global Value Chains

By David Levy.

Gerald Davis and Israel Drori make the provocative argument in their thoughtful piece, After the Collapse of the Large Corporation – Progressivism 2.0?, that the era of powerful, large corporations able to provide long-term economic security for employees is over. If the corporate giants of the last century required a strong, centralized government to provide adequate regulation and countervailing power, Davis and Drori contend that we need new models of governance for an era of fragmented, networked economic forms. While it’s undoubtedly true that economic activity has become more disaggregated in the internet age, the demise of the large corporation, and more importantly, of corporate power, has been greatly exaggerated.

After the Collapse of the Large Corporation – Progressivism 2.0?

By Gerald Davis and Israel Drori.

A landmark moment in the development of progressive politics in the U.S. was Theodore Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism” speech in Osawatomie Kansas in August 1910. Roosevelt described the social problems of the early twentieth century – soaring inequality, concentrated economic power, the corrupting influence of corporate money in politics, and the shadowy role of Wall Street – and called for a more robust Federal government to rein in the national-scale corporations that were beginning to dominate the economy.