In Corporate Governance, Employee Voice, and Work Organization, Inge Lippert, Tony Huzzard, Ulrich Jürgens, and William Lazonick provide an important account of cross-national variation in the automotive supply industry. In particular, they seek to show that the pressure toward shareholder value has not resulted in a complete convergence of firm practices and that explanations that draw solely on national-level institutions overlook significant intracountry heterogeneity. To do so, they examine the automotive supply industry in the United States, Germany, and Sweden in terms of shifting approaches to corporate governance, employee voice mechanisms, and work systems. The authors are especially concerned with the importance of employee representation for the creation and preservation of “high-road” jobs—those that involve employee autonomy, skills development, and trust—in the face of growing emphases on shareholder value (p. 31). While the negative effects of shareholder value ideology on working conditions are real enough, this book shows that high-road jobs are still possible and that mechanisms for employee voice play a role in their preservation.

Previous accounts of variations in corporate governance, employee voice, and work quality tended to draw from the “varieties of capitalism” approach, which views the configurations of largely stable institutions at the country level as the primary explanatory factors of variations among firms. Typically, Anglo-Saxon countries have been classified as “outsider” systems, in which firms exclude employee voice and are oriented more toward low-road work organization, while those in continental Europe have high levels of employee voice, with correspondingly higher-quality work systems. Commentators have argued that financialization of the global economy has undermined many of these differences. While recognizing the merit of country-level factors as independent variables (such factors are presented in chapter 3), the authors here draw on theories of institutional change to argue that actors’ decisions can divert from the general character of those national institutions (p. 23). With regards to financialization, not all firms are equidistant to the stock market; firms will differ in important ways depending on their exposure, and these variations result in different models of development even within the same national context.

Lippert et al. develop their typology for the level of firm exposure to capital markets in chapter 4. Firms differ not only with respect to the national systems, but also according to their distance from the stock market: whether they are sheltered, or based on private capital; unsheltered, or financed by “shares in free float”; or financed by private equity. Which one of these regimes a firm falls into, the authors argue, will influence its corporate governance system and mediate the influence of shareholder value and the national context. In particular, sheltered firms will be more able to protect employee voice mechanisms from being eroded by profit motives.

To illustrate differences in corporate governance and their implications for employee voice and job quality, Lippert et al. present in chapters 5, 6, and 7 detailed case studies from firms in the automotive supply industry in each country, each corresponding to one of the three regimes. The authors use the case studies to examine the extent to which existing firms adopt new financial logics and the resulting changes to firm practices. The findings show more variation than existing theories predict. For firms that are sheltered from the stock market, new financial logics enter the firm not through abrupt changes in ownership structure but through adaptations made to conform to the institutional environment. Here, changes are not path-breaking (p. 215). That is, firms maintain core elements of the traditional paths in terms of employee voice mechanisms and high-quality work systems. When the source of the change is exogenous, and alters the ownership structure in such a way as to close the distance between the firm and the stock market, subsequent changes are more dramatic. The European firms that became unsheltered showed a strong tendency toward American-style governance, with some erosion of employee voice mechanisms and movement toward low-road work systems. This was especially notable in the Swedish case. Consistent with the authors’ arguments, strong voice mechanisms in the German case worked to preserve some high-road elements. In the United States, the economic crisis and the resulting deal forged between trade unions and employers strengthened voice mechanisms in the unsheltered firm; however, Taylorist work organization—in terms of repetitive tasks involving fairly low skill—was largely preserved (p. 174). And firms in all countries that became backed by private equity experienced drastic changes to shareholder value with a corresponding move toward the low road.

Lippert et al. are successful in using the case studies to show the value of “institutional change” approaches over the varieties of capitalism approach and in demonstrating a link between employee voice mechanisms and high-road work systems. Readers interested in corporate governance, labor, and institutions will find much of value in the authors’ detailed analysis. Some may be left with some questions regarding case selection, especially in terms of the cases that deviate from the national-level trends. While they speak to the possibility of alternate paths within a national context, their generalizability is left somewhat open. Questions may also remain about the mechanisms of change. For the unsheltered firms, for example, the analyses largely take place after a firm has experienced an exogenous shock (such as a merger or an ownership crisis) and undergone a governance change as a result. Because the bulk of the process-tracing analysis is on the effects of these changes, the discussion leaves open the question of why some firms respond to crises with drastic governance changes and others do not. Overall, though, readers will appreciate the level of detail in each of the case studies and the book's findings, which are nuanced but cohesive. The pressure toward shareholder value may be all but universal, but neither its implementation at the firm level nor its implications for high-road jobs should be seen as such.