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This paper examines the development of global skill webs in transnational companies (TNCs). Based on research in seven countries, it argues that skill webs are becoming more strategic in character as companies seek competitive advantage by relocating high-skilled work to low-cost locations. The paper explores the implications of these findings for both the 'conventional' approach to international human resource management and that influenced by the 'varieties of capitalism' School. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article evaluates the varieties of capitalism (VoC) approach to institutional convergence, globalization, and divergence as represented by the skill formation and welfare state theory of Margarita Estevez-Abe, Torben Iversen, and David Soskice. The article explains that the VoC approach addresses business strategies, which are based on distinctive national institutional structures generated by provisional solutions to specific problems that businesses in any capitalist economy are forced to address.

The article presents the authors' reply to Geoff Whitty's comments on Capital and Class. Whitty claims that we offer ...appears to be an unreconstructed notion of revolutionary socialist struggle every bit as implausible as some of the naive suggestions for reforming capitalism they rightly deride. He also charges us with committing most of the errors they identify in others, with only being prepared to excuse our own past practice, with a crudity of argument which is sloganistic, distanced from real struggles and specific crisis. More specifically, he does not accept the criticism of Rachel Sharp and ourselves of his advocacy of involvement within the Labor Party in Britain. Finally, he notes that practice will require some specification of what links with the community, social movements, working class politics, trade union struggles, broader based strategies of social justice, and so on, might actually mean in practice. Nevertheless, Whitty comes to agreeing with us in his final paragraph where he specifies the links necessary for practice. We have quoted his list above. Our list included trade union politics, party organization, mass mobilization, revolutionary training and political education, international solidarity, women's liberation, national freedom for minorities and struggles against war. Whitty's criticism on this point is plainly inconsistent. We do not wish to suggest that only our past be excused. If this is the impression we have created then we are mistaken and Whitty' criticism is important and well taken.