Documents Frege, Carola M. 27 results

"As unions face an ongoing crisis all over the industrialized world, they have often been portrayed as outmoded remnants of an old economic structure. This book argues that despite structural shifts in the economy and in politics, unions retain important functions for capitalist economies as well as for political democracy. Union revitalization in the face of their current difficulties is therefore of fundamental importance. This book charts the strategies unions use to respond to global union decline and to revive their fortunes in five countries — the liberal market economies of the US and the UK; the coordinated economy of Germany and the Mediterranean economies of Italy and Spain — thus providing a wide range of institutional settings, union structures, identities, and union responses. Each chapter provides a comparative analysis of a particular strategy, looking in turn at union organizing, social partnership, political action, organizational restructuring, coalition-building, and international action. It provides a rich source of documentation about union activity, but more importantly it goes beyond description to address two of the big questions in comparative research: How can we explain cross-country differences in union responses to global decline? And how effective are these actions in helping to revitalize national labour movements?"

"Germany and the USA have very different systems of legal representation and rights at work, but these differences and their effects may have lessened. We draw on a large-scale telephone survey to explore worker perceptions of these systems, and find that perceptions of German workers are more favourable than those of their US counterparts, but not by as much as might be expected. Our findings could in part be explained by cross-national differences in both worker ideologies and the way the different systems function, but they also point to the importance of perceptions in understanding and assessing cross-national institutional differences, and have implications for the future of workplace representation and rights in both nations."

"This article discusses the historical trajectories of employment research in the U.S. and Germany. Both countries exemplify very different research traditions, which have their origins in the 19th and early 20th century and are shaped not only by the field of inquiry (different national employment institutions and practices), but also by different social scientific traditions and political philosophies, for example the different inter-pretation of what constitutes industrial democracy or employees' rights at work. I con-clude that current research still differs across countries and that we would do well to endorse this plurality rather than assuming an inevitable convergence to US research styles."

""Employment Relations" is widely taught in business schools around the world. Increasingly however more emphasis is being placed on the comparative and international dimensions of the relations between employers and workers. It is becoming ever more important to comprehend today's work and employment issues alongside a knowledge of the dynamics between global financial and product markets, global production chains, national and international employment actors and institutions and the ways in which these relationships play out in different national contexts. This textbook is the first to present a cross-section of country studies, including all four BRIC countries, Brazil, Russia, India and China alongside integrative thematic chapters covering all the important topics needed to excel in this field. The textbook also benefits from the editors' and contributors' experience as leading scholars in Employment Relations."

"The authors draw on a telephone survey of 1,000 U.S. workers to explore whether alternative, nonunion forms of representation are filling the gap left by union decline; whether this matters to authority relations at work; and whether these first two points help to explain union decline. The authors find that nonunion associations do not appear to be filling the gap, but that management-established, nonunion representation systems are one-and-a-half times as widespread as is union representation and are evaluated somewhat more favorably by workers. Both unions and management-established systems bear positive associations with authority relations at work before controlling for management practices, but these are substantially weakened once management practices--especially "bureaucratic" practices--are entered. The authors argue that, in the case of unions, this is likely because unions cause employers to adopt these practices. This is not likely to be the case in management-established systems, however, which are more likely to be set up in conjunction with these practices. Finally, results suggest that management-established systems are often in violation of the Wagner Act, but they bear no association with the propensity to vote for a union. Instead, bureaucratic practices matter, independently of these systems."

"Industrial relations (IR) research faces various pressures of internationalization. Not only do global economic forces increasingly shape the subject of the discipline, employment relations, but also the academic community itself is becoming more international. The article discusses whether and in what ways IR research is affected by these trends. It is based on a comparative, longitudinal study of journal publications in the USA, Britain and Germany. The findings reveal significantly different patterns of IR research across the three countries. In particular, the strong variation between US and British research patterns challenges the common notion of a homogeneous Anglo-Saxon style in conducting social science research. The analysis suggests that despite growing internationalization, IR research continues to be strongly embedded in nationally specific research cultures and traditions."

"To better understand cross-country variations of institutions and practices of industrial democracy, such as between Germany and the US, this article highlights a frequently neglected explanatory factor, the national-specific discourses of democracy at work. These discourses are shaped by alternative political philosophies of the 19th century on the relationship between state, society and economy. In particular, how the role of the firm in society was conceptualized differently between the emerging capitalist economies of Germany and the US had a lasting impact on the extent and form of their industrial democracies today."

"The article reviews the existing English- and German-speaking literature on the German works council. Three major research topics are discussed: the ontology and typologies of works councils; their current practice and transformation; and their economic outcomes. Although much research has been conducted on the internal functioning of the works council–management relationship, it is clear that we still know little about the determinants of different workplace relations and their outcomes. The article concludes by advocating a reviving research interest in the link between codetermination and political democracy."