"Multirationality in negotiation and decision-making processes within co-determination

Currently works council typologies are often used to describe negotiation processes between employers and corporate co-determination. These generally pursue a more poweroriented perspective to describe the negotiation processes and their results. In complex and largely unknown environments, however, this focus seems to be too narrow. For this reason, a conceptual framing of these processes, one dependent on a multi-rational perspective, is empirically applied to a case study of the Roadmap Digital Transformation of the Volkswagen brand. To this end, the article develops two logics of action based on a specific context of codetermination: a functional-economic rationality of corporate representation and a socioeconomic rationality of corporate co-determination. Depending on the specific subject of negotiation it is shown that the two rationalities in the course of the negotiation process either tolerate each other or promote innovative compromise solutions. Only such substantive issues that correspond to the core of the respective rationality contribute to polarization, i. e. the enforcement of one of the positions."

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