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Walmart’s Contested Expansion in the Retail Business: Differential Accumulation, Institutional Restructuring and Social Resistance

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  • Baines, Joseph

Abstract

This paper offers an analysis of Walmart's contested expansion in the retail business. It draws on, and develops, some aspects of the capital as power framework so as to provide the first quantitative explication of the company's power trajectory to date. After rapid growth in the first four decades of its existence, the power of Walmart appears to be flat-lining relative to dominant capital as a whole. The major problems for Walmart lie in the fact that its green-field growth is running into barriers, while its cost cutting measures seem to be approaching a floor. The paper contends that these problems are in part born out of resistance that Walmart is experiencing at multiple social scales. This resistance helps to explain why Walmart is nearing what appears to be an 'asymptote' – a distributional limit that the company might not be able to pass. Walmart’s power trajectory may give us clues about the future limits on the power of dominant capital as a whole.

Suggested Citation

  • Baines, Joseph, 2012. "Walmart’s Contested Expansion in the Retail Business: Differential Accumulation, Institutional Restructuring and Social Resistance," EconStor Preprints 157836, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:esprep:157836
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    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/157836/1/bna-358_20120925_baines_walmart_contested_expansion.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Nitzan, Jonathan & Bichler, Shimshon, 2009. "Capital as Power. A Study of Order and Creorder," EconStor Books, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, number 157973, September.
    2. Bichler, Shimshon & Nitzan, Jonathan, 2012. "The Asymptotes of Power," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, issue 60, pages 18-53.
    3. Standing, Guy, 1989. "Global feminization through flexible labor," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 17(7), pages 1077-1095, July.
    4. Basker, Emek, 2011. "The Causes and Consequences of Wal-Mart’s Growth," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 5, pages 110-134.
    5. Thomas J. Holmes, 2011. "The Diffusion of Wal‐Mart and Economies of Density," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(1), pages 253-302, January.
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