Abstract We present a comparative case study of software development teams in 14 firms, based on 50 semi-structured interviews with 39 people, plus non-participant observation. Our theory proposes that an inherent contradiction of labour management—conflicting pressures to empower workers (to enhance capabilities) and to control workers (to ensure labour discipline)—becomes refracted in distinct ways through the service triangle between customers, managers, and workers. We ask how do software managers deal with competing pressures to simultaneously (1) generate high-quality, creative output, (2) ensure efficiency and workforce discipline, and (3) mediate between clients and workers? Most managers in our study primarily focused on empowering their software developers while the latter experienced client attempts to establish detailed control of their work. In these cases, the managers attempted to control the clients by buffering developers from client demands or pushing back against them.
Abstract Homeowners insurance is central to the functioning of mortgage and housing markets, but climate change threatens the conditions on which this role has been built. This study examines this tension in California, asking: how does climate change reshape underwriting practices in the homeowners insurance market, and which communities are most affected by these changes? Leveraging ZIP Code-level data, I show that the relationship between wildfire risk and insurance outcomes changed discontinuously after the disastrous 2017–2018 wildfire season, with high-risk areas experiencing a sharp spike in coverage loss followed by a subsequent increase in reliance on insurance of last resort. Moreover, the findings point to the unequal distributional consequences of this new form of climate vulnerability: coverage loss and reliance on insurance of last resort are systematically higher in lower-income areas, suggesting that financial vulnerability overlaps with a higher risk of inadequate coverage. Taken together, the findings show that the short-term structure of insurance contracts can turn prolonged increases in climate risk—periods of “risk accumulation”—into discontinuous economic shocks, adding a further layer of unequally distributed disruption beyond direct disaster damage.
Nearly three-quarters of Chinese outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) is routed through offshore financial centers (OFCs), a proportion significantly higher than that observed for most Western multinationals. Offshore finance is typically understood as a mechanism of market escape and sovereignty erosion. This article offers an alternative interpretation. Drawing on corporate-level ownership reconstruction and interviews, and focusing on Chinese investment in Africa, we show that offshore structures form part of a differentiated architecture through which Chinese capital is organized and projected internationally. Hong Kong performs a pivotal upstream function, providing globally legible corporate forms that facilitate access to international capital while buffering mainland regulatory constraints. Yet Hong Kong alone does not account for observed patterns. Chinese firms-state-owned and private-layer additional jurisdictions such as the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, and Singapore into their corporate chains, each serving distinct governance, financing, and risk-management functions. We argue that offshore operates simultaneously as a mechanism of sovereign outsourcing and as a technology of regulatory arbitrage, positioning it as a governance infrastructure embedded within contemporary global capitalism.
Over the last 15 years, the concept of stranded assets has become increasingly prominent in analysis of the climate crisis and green transition. This study examines the history of this concept, drawing on databases of digitized publications to show how the language of 'stranding' was first systematically applied to asset-related losses in the 1980s. It documents how this terminology originated in US debates around public utility deregulation, where a diagnosis of 'stranding' helped to justify compensation in situations where policy change imposed investment losses on private asset owners-foreshadowing similar claims in parts of contemporary climate discourse, despite such compensation threatening to turn the 'polluter pays' principle on its head. Yet, exploring the history of stranded assets also reveals how this reallocation of risk was contested, highlighting flaws in the case for compensating owners of fossil fuel-related assets today.
This article examines how firm political connections affect the financing constraints of Pakistani firms, and how these are related to firm performance. Using panel data for the listed, non-financial, Pakistani firms, over the 2007-15 period, our empirical analysis shows that in Pakistan formal political connections affect significantly firm financial status: politically connected firms are less financially constrained. The results are consistent across various measures of financial status. We find, however, evidence that politically connected firms perform worse than unconnected firms. The results are robust to three different measures of firm performance. We also find some evidence that the effects of political connections on firm performance vary across groups of Pakistani firms by the level of financing constraint. Our results suggest financial resource misallocation in Pakistan consistent with the soft-budget constraint theory.
