Brexit and Beyond: The BJM and Unforeseen Events
| Date | 01 October 2016 |
| Author | Pawan Budhwar,Geoffrey Wood |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12190 |
| Published date | 01 October 2016 |
British Journal of Management, Vol. 27, 680–681 (2016)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12190
EDITORIAL
Brexit and Beyond: The BJM and
Unforeseen Events
Georey Wood and Pawan Budhwar1
Essex Business School, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK and 1Aston Business School, Aston
University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham, B4 7ET, UK
Corresponding author email: gtwood@essex.ac.uk
A criticism often made of business and manage-
ment journals is that, even if they carry undeni-
ably good work, they are slow at responding to un-
foreseen events, even if they have the potential to
undermine the basis of institutional regimes and
the viability of associated firm practices. In this is-
sue, along with the general issue articles, we are
seeking to respond to this challenge through car-
rying a couple of short conceptual papers by emi-
nent scholars, highlighting some of the challenges
to firms and the wider economy posed by rapidly
evolving developments following the Brexit deci-
sion; we hope that these may both provide novel
insights and perspectives to readers, and help map
out future research agendas.
We would suggest that the recent developments
raise a number of important research questions.
First, the leave vote clearly reflected the extent to
which a large number of individuals saw them-
selves as losers from long-term economic devel-
opments (Standing, 2014), yet the blame got de-
flected onto both vulnerable social outsiders and
the EU (see Ivarsflaten, 2008). This, and the rise
of the far right in many other European countries,
would highlight the need for new institutional set-
tlements are embarked on, the social fabric itself
may be endangered. However, historical evidence
alerts us that dominant actors will only consider
such an option when all other alternatives have
been exhausted. While firms bear a heavy price for
populist political backlashes, the immediate chal-
lenges of organizational life invariably place the
need for institutional settlements far back on the
agenda. Here, we would argue that key research
priorities should include better understanding of
the circumstances under which firms adopt or sup-
port the development of regulations that do more
than simply advance short-term organizational
interests.
Second, there is the immediate eect on the
relative density and sustainability of inter- and
intra-organizational ties. National-level decisions
to disengage selectively from transnational insti-
tutional regimes may undermine specific comple-
mentarities, undermining particular sets of firm-
level practices (Boyer, 2011; Wilkinson, Wood and
Deeg, 2014); in turn, this may force firms to en-
gage in extended periods of experimentation or
simply default to following on legal bare minima,
a thin basis on which to build organizational dis-
tinction (Pfeer, 1998). It also may weaken estab-
lished supply chain relations, imparting a greater
degree of uncertainty and imbalances in knowl-
edge between participating firms. In turn, this
would shift the balance further towards dominant
partners (Jessop, 2012; Streeck, 2009). Within the
firm, employment relations maybecome more ten-
uous, as weaker supra-national restraints may en-
tice the adoption of ever more radical labour mar-
ket deregulation (Jessop, 2012). In turn, this would
discourage the development of firm-specific hu-
man capital, which may undermine the compet-
itive base of the firm in the medium and long
terms (Brewster et al., 2012). This may also have
© 2016 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
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