In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Creating Nordic Capitalism: The Business History of a Competitive Periphery
  • Eiriin Larsen
Susanna Fellman, Martin Jes Iversen, Hans Sjögren, and Lars Thue, eds. Creating Nordic Capitalism: The Business History of a Competitive Periphery. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. xix + 636 pp. ISBN 978-0-230-54553-3, $45.00 (paper).

While the Nordic countries are all to be found among the top ten most growth-oriented economies in the world, the notion of a "Nordic Capitalism" does not resonate in the same way as the Nordic (or Scandinavian) Welfare Model. The latter has been a familiar reference point for policymaking and social research but the former remains largely unexplored. Creating Nordic Capitalism, written and edited by business historians from Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Norway, thus is a fresh empirical attempt to link the two.

The book is made up by four country-chapters, each followed by case studies of different companies in order to illustrate the economic, social, and political trajectories of the Nordic region from the early 1800s onwards. From a poor starting point in terms of material standards, the Nordic countries can now boast impressive economic growth, high employment rates, and close to universal social welfare. By giving priority to the firm and the entrepreneur (which include often fascinating accounts of household names such as Nokia, Carlsberg, ABB, Elkem, plus comparatively unknown companies such as Stora-Enso, Arla, and Nordea's Norwegian forerunner, among others) the authors demonstrate how small and open economies that are heavily dependent on foreign trade can adapt to changing market conditions and policy directions. Spurred by trade liberalization in the mid-nineteenth century, the countries exploited international markets with natural resources like timber, fish, metals (Norway, Finland, and Sweden), and agro-industrial products (Denmark). However, comparative advantage was obtained from not only natural resources as the book consistently demonstrates the importance of technological innovation and entrepreneurial activity, later the support by large public R&D budgets.

A second red thread is the role of the State. Organized capitalism of the kind to be found in the Nordic countries has relied—and still does—on [End Page 636] a relatively engaged State. In some periods this meant a high degree of State ownership and involvement, but it also materialized in regulation and different forms of guidance and support. After 1945, this engagement was accompanied by the rapid expansion of the public sector and a generous welfare State (largely financed by taxes), and the period from 1945 to 1970 is known as the Golden Age.

But differences appear to be as common as similarities—Finland was a latecomer in developing a "universal" welfare system and collective wage bargaining and it did not adopt Keynesian macroeconomics in response to the Great Depression. Instead, Finland achieved growth by promoting investment with the aid of policies keeping interest rates low. Thus, evoking a national or Nordic model of capitalism is not historically self-evident, as the authors and editors of this book point out. Nonetheless, in their conclusion to the book, two of the editors Hans Sjögren and Susanna Fellman argue that the structural crisis of the 1970s, and the recession in the early 1990s, created conditions for convergence amongst the four economies. Although they also cite external factors such as increased internationalization and the role of new supranational regulating bodies such as the WTO and the EU, which ostensibly helped renew the Nordic capitalist system.

This is all well and good, but to what extent does the book demonstrate the utility of the term Nordic Capitalism? Can one distinguish the capitalism of this region from that found in other small and open economies? Does this phrase suggest that a different or unique form of business organization exists on Europe's periphery demanding closer scholarly attention? Nordic Capitalism implicitly offers itself as a theoretical construct rather than a purely historical phenomenon and should consequently be treated like one.

In the Introduction to the book, the other two editors, Lars Thue and Martin Jes Iversen write that the "book is a comparative analysis" (e.g., p. 1), which suggests that the four countries have more in common than shared borders. However, this comparative ambition is...

pdf

Share