Is What's Good for Business Also Good for the Market? Pro-business and Pro-market Policy Dynamics
Abstract: We build a process model in a new theoretical conceptualization of capitalist systems enhanced by new-institutionalist perspectives. Our rendering ultimately provides managers with a more tractable platform for decision-making than neoclassical models in economics, which largely ignore the role of government in setting the rules of the game. To construct our reconceptualization, we first define precisely what pro-business and pro-market policies underlying market-based systems look like at congruous levels of analysis. On that foundation, we build a process model illustrating pro-market tendencies within the business community, exploring their dynamics at different levels of product/service market maturity. Rounding out our reconceptualization, we recognize non-market actors typically omitted from neoclassical analyses and highlight the critical roles they play as pillars sustaining and supporting capitalist systems over the long run. We conclude with implications for managers and management education—as well as for the future of capitalism. In both the neoclassical paradigm and our enhanced rendering, managers remain self-interested; however, in our rendering astute managers ultimately seek positions that allow them to support market function rather than merely seeking positions that deteriorate market function as firms carve out ever more special privileges.
