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

Reviewed by:
  • Greening the Car Industry: Varieties of Capitalism and Climate Change
  • Katja Biedenkopf
Mikler, John. 2009. Greening the Car Industry: Varieties of Capitalism and Climate Change. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.

Car manufacturing is a global industry dominated by a small number of large multinational corporations. Although they operate in a global market, car companies display significant differences in their approach to environmental protection and climate change. Japanese manufacturers are pioneers in hybrid technology, while their German counterparts focus on incremental improvements of their diesel technology. US car manufacturers lag behind Japanese and German [End Page 129] environmental product development initiatives. John Mikler takes this observation as the starting point for his analysis of car manufacturers' environmental strategies and activities. He analyzes the factors that motivate car firms to consider environmental issues in their operations, and examines national and individual differences between the major companies in this sector. His impressive empirical study shows that both rational profit-maximizing motivations and behavior based on institutionalized norms explain the car industry's environmental activities. And contrary to what one would expect from a global industry, he finds that a corporation's home country, and not the global market, has the major influence in shaping its environmental activities.

Rejecting the liberal economic model that considers companies as self-interested actors aiming exclusively to maximize material profit and power, Mikler applies an alternative analytical approach that considers the variations of national institutions in capitalist relations as a central explanatory factor. This application of the Varieties of Capitalism (VOC) approach is innovative since he does not use it to assess comparative advantages of states with regard to their industrial bases and markets, as is commonly done, but rather to investigate whether varieties of capitalism have implications for the environment. The VOC approach distinguishes between liberal market economies (LMEs) and coordinated market economies (CMEs). This distinction is used as a heuristic device to organize information and crystallize country-specific features, acknowledging that these are extremes on a continuum. In LMEs, the state and the market are separate, whereas CMEs have closer state-business relations.

In LMEs, there is a priority for the market as the organizer of economic activities, while in CMEs, mechanisms for organizing economic activities are more relational and cooperative—with the market as only one among many organizing mechanisms. LME firms are therefore more focused on exogenous material factors, as opposed to the endogenous factors that are more prominent in CME firms. In CMEs, there is a preference for non-price competition via product innovation. In LMEs, however, companies compete primarily on the price of their products. These key differences between the models of capitalism and the resulting institutions of capitalist relations, Mikler argues, explain different car manufacturers' activities with regard to the environment.

This carefully crafted and meticulously documented empirical study, drawing on statistics, the analysis of corporate environmental reports and expert interviews, makes a compelling argument for the important role of varieties of capitalism in motivating car manufacturers' environmental activities. The United States, Germany, and Japan were chosen as case studies because they are the home countries to the world's largest car manufacturers. The United States is a case of an LME while Germany and Japan are different variations of CMEs. In the United States, the state and the market are separated whereas in Germany the state plays a coordinating role based on negotiated consensus between a range of stakeholders. In Japan, the state and the market are in a symbiotic relationship based on mutual understanding. Industry groups are involved in developing policies and a culture of consultation and conflict avoidance enables Japanese [End Page 130] bureaucrats to issue legally non-binding instructions that are nevertheless followed by industry.

Mikler's overall finding is that "firms' strategies are dependent on where they have their home base" (p. 221). Resulting from the co- and self-regulatory way of rule-making in Japan, Japanese car manufacturers tend to lead—rather than follow—the market. They have longer-term strategic horizons. The "technonationalist" model of the Japanese CME incentivizes radical technological solutions and fast marketing, which explains Japanese companies' internal strategies to embrace environmental technologies in order to enhance their corporate performance. Japanese...

pdf

Share