The Need for an Engaged, Expert and Inclusive British Capitalism

Abstract

It is a familiar proposition that economies such as Britain and the United States have an advantage in radical innovation and therefore in sectors in which this is relatively important, in general, high-technology ones. Hall and Soskice (2001) call such economies liberal market economies (LMEs), a term which is now too familiar to need definition here; we shall call them shareholder capitalist, following Tylecote and Visintin (2008). Hall and Soskice (H&S) also argue that economies such as Germany and Japan have an advantage in incremental innovation and therefore in sectors in which this is more important (in general, medium or mediumto high-tech). H&S call these, business co-ordinated market economies, CMEs, in which there is ‘considerable non-market co-ordination directly and indirectly between companies’ (Soskice, 1999: 103); again, we follow Tylecote and Visintin and call Germany and Japan stakeholder capitalist. This is a rather narrower grouping because it is defined by business co-ordination à la H&S and employee inclusion, which we shall define below.