1. Hirschman defines voice as efforts implemented to change rather than escape an objectionable state of affairs, A. O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Declines in Firms, Organizations and States (London, Harvard University Press 1970); see also R.B. Freeman and J.L. Medoff, What Do Unions Do? (New York, Basic Books 1984); U. Muckenberger, ‘Alternative Mechanisms of Voice Representation’, in B. Bercusson and C. Estlund, Regulating Labour in the Wake of Globalisation (Oxford, Hart Publishing 2007).
2. For a discussion of how economic downturn influences the literature on the comparative advantage of governance models and, in turn, inspires regulations, see P. Gourevitch and J. Shin, Political Power and Corporate Control (Princeton, Princeton University Press 2005), Chapter 1. Regarding a renewed interest in corporate governance in general following the ‘credit crisis’, see, by way of example, the 19 July 2009 edition of The Economist entitled: ‘What Went Wrong with Economics?’. See also the Financial Times’ collection of articles under the title ‘The Future of Capitalism’, posing the following question: ‘The credit crunch has destroyed faith in the free market ideology that has dominated Western economic thinking for a generation. But what can — and should — replace it?’ In the UK, in October 2010, the government issued a consultation paper regarding proposed changes to corporate governance to combat short-termism, available at: .
3. See P. H. Hall and D. Soskice, Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (Oxford, Oxford University Press 2001), Chapter 1, regarding the typology of the UK and the USA as archetypical LMEs. In LMEs, relations between firms and other actors are coordinated primarily through competitive markets.
4. Ibid., regarding the typology of Germany as the archetypical CME. In CMEs, firms engage in non-market coordination, through network relations, incomplete contracts and cross-industry institutions, such as trade unions and employers’ associations.
5. See A. Pendleton and H. Gospel, ‘Market and Relationships: Finance Governance, and Labour in the United Kingdom’, in H. Gospel and A. Pendleton, eds., Corporate Governance and Labour Management: An International Comparison (Oxford, Oxford University Press 2005) p. 59; S. Deakin, ‘Workers Finance and Democracy’, in C. Barnard, S. Deakin and G.S. Morris, eds., The Future of Labour Law (Oxford, Hart Publishing 2004); S. Deakin and A. Koukiadaki, ‘Governance Processes, Labour-Management Partnership and Employee Voice in the Construction of Heathrow Terminal 5’, 38 Industrial Law Journal (2009) p. 365. For a discussion in the USA context, see P. Weiler, Governing the Workplace: The Future of Labour and Employment Law (Cambridge, Harvard University Press 1990); S. Jacoby, ‘Current Prospects for Employee Representation in the US: Old Wine in New Bottles?’, 16 Journal of Labor Research (1995) p. 391; M.J. Sanford, ‘Corporate Governance and Employees in the United States’, in Gospel and Pendleton, ibid., p. 31.