Apart from being one of the hardest hit sectors during the 2008 financial crisis, the auto sector is also a prominent sector where emerging auto markets such as China have fared relatively well compared to their competitors in North America and Europe. This paper examines various ways that nations have shifted their policy gears to revive and restructure the automotive industry by using the case studies of the USA, France, and China. New sets of policy initiatives are contingent on particular industrial and institutional contexts, but both developed and developing countries have employed wide range of “murky” protectionist measures. This makes it unlikely for the WTO member countries to take a naming and shaming approach and file a case at the WTO level, which poses challenges to the WTO rules and trade liberalization.

Emerging markets are rapidly gaining importance in the world economy and many multinational corporations (MNCs) are taking advantage of this economic development by expanding their activities there. Due to the high level of perceived uncertainty and lack of formal institutions in these markets, firms cope by relying on network relationships with other organizational actors – including societal and political actors – in their environment. In these uncertain environments, where political and economic change is frequent, firms may have to negotiate their relationships frequently – building new ties and severing old ones. In this paper, findings from a case study of Turkey reveal that while the role of political actors in emerging markets should not be neglected, the value of political ties are contingent on the market environment and can change in the face of state policy change. Hence, MNCs tend to buffer the political hazards through their connections to the business and civil society organizations. Consequently, we suggest that researchers in this field might improve the explanatory power of their models by including consideration of the context that firms are embedded in. Then the focus needs to be shifted towards the interplay between different actors and the indirect impact of network ties along with the direct effects.

This paper explores the plurality of institutional environments in which standards for the service sector are expected to support the rise of a global knowledge-based economy. A wide range of international bodies is able to define standards affecting the internationalization of services. Relying on global political economy approaches, the analysis uncovers the power relations underpinning the various forms of standards supporting a deeper integration of the market for services. Service standards are conceived as heterogeneous forms of transnational hybrid authority. The empirical study focuses on recent developments in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the European Union, and the US. In contrast to conventional views opposing the American system to the ISO/European framework, the paper argues that institutional developments of service standards are likely to face trade-offs and compromises reflecting contrasting models of standardization, not only between, but also across, those systems. While this undermines the conventional analysis of a transatlantic divide in standardization, it also shows that the variance between product and service standards is much greater in the European context and the ISO system than in the US, where it is hardly debated.

Amid concerns for a regulatory void in transnational fields, the principle of private regulation has become institutionalized. Many sectors have seen the emergence of multiple and overlapping standards. When comparing the sectors, there is considerable variation in standard multiplicity. We build on three institutional perspectives that have been put forward to explain the emergence of sustainability standards – the economic, idealist and political-institutional perspectives – to analyze the phenomenon of standard multiplicity. Each perspective reflects a different kind of action logic and is simultaneously present and accessible to various parties involved. Based on a cross-sector analysis of standards multiplicity in the forestry, coffee and textile sectors, this article seeks to make two contributions. First, whereas these three perspectives have been presented as competing, we propose that they are complementary in offering partial explanations for different episodes in the dynamics underlying standards multiplicity in different sectors. Second, whereas most studies have analyzed standard setting in single sectors and thus have understood it as being an intra-sector phenomenon, our cross-sector analysis of the dynamics of standard setting suggests that it is propelled by both sector-specific contingencies and experiences as well as by the experiences from other sectors.

Standards for “ethical” goods provide activists and mission-driven producers with opportunities to clarify decisions for so-called “ethical consumers” and spur growth in these new markets. But certification schemes also raise monitoring challenges, and may confuse consumers and create opportunities for cooptation by large corporate competitors. In this interview-based study, we examined the localism movement to understand why social movement leaders might resist harmonization of standards. We find that leaders define “local” in at least five ways, and argue that they resist harmonization of local for pragmatic, philosophical, and strategic reasons. We conclude that tolerance for multiple standards could be beneficial for core activists in market-oriented social movements. If and when these groups turn more systematically to the political system, maintaining loose and multiple standards may impede policy success. The “buy local” case suggests, however, that as long as the market remains activists’ primary mechanism for social change, decentralized governance and multiple standards in ethical markets allow activists to maintain a powerful voice in defining ethical products and business practices.