Painting the Black Box

In the work discussed here, Professor Vicente Salas Fumás maintains that the conventional, "hierarchical" and "American" company is exhausted. He defends that both the success of Japanese companies - supposedly unconventional and "participatory" - and the need to encourage investment in specific human capital advise introducing labor participation in the company and not putting "excessive emphasis" on liberalizing the labor market. This comment argues that, on the contrary, it is urgent in Spain to liberalize this market so as not to continue impeding the type of investments that citizens most desire. These are the ones that provide long-term jobs, and which today are unviable, among other reasons, due to the high risk of expropriation suffered by their creators, as a consequence of a naively protectionist labor regulation. It is also maintained that the identification of the company in the economic analysis and in the real world as a hierarchy is inaccurate, and even more so with an anachronistic characterization of it; and that the present and proposed participatory regulations tend to sacrifize the interests of the majority of workers and citizens. ---

Related files:

SALAS FUMÁS, V. (1993), “La empresa en el análisis económico”, Papeles de Economía Española, no. 57, 1993, pp. 126-48.

Arruñada, Benito (1993), “Pintando la caja negra”, Papeles de Economía Española, 57, 156-69.

SALAS FUMÁS, V. (1993), “Réplica a los comentarios del profesor Arruñada”, Papeles de Economía Española, no. 57, p. 170.

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