The Historical Trajectory of a Peripheral National Business System

The recent global financial crisis has revealed that the application of ahistorical and grossly generalised lessons and methods from studies on core National Business Systems (NBS) to understand countries on the European periphery does not generate explanations about the ‘leaping’ back and forth of systems from the periphery to the semi-periphery. Research on peripheral countries is limited, and most NBS literature focuses on advanced-core or semi-peripheral systems. There have been several studies on Asian peripheral countries, including China, Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea (Witt & Reading, 2012; Černíková, 2010; Bendt & Sanne, 2010; Tipton, 2009; Carney, 2005; Yeung, 2000; Whitley, 1991) as well as comparative studies (Casson & Lundan, 1999) and fewer studies on European and South American peripheral countries in the last decade (Gabrisch et al., 2012; Černíková, 2010; Psychogios & Szamosi, 2007; Amable, 2003). Furthermore, the definition of ‘periphery’ in these studies has been confusing, as the same economies have sometimes been perceived as peripheral and sometimes as semi-peripheral or core (Italy and Spain). For example, the European periphery was thought to comprise the countries of Eastern Europe (the Balkans, including Greece) or the former Soviet Empire (Poland), while countries areas on the European semi-periphery are declining cores — Portugal, Spain, Italy, southern Germany and southern France (Chase-Dunn et al., 2000).