"This paper examines the potential of collective bargaining to generate mutually advantageous flexibility and security outcomes at firm level. By focusing attention on actors' negotiating capacity at sites in Denmark and Italy of four large chemical‐pharmaceutical companies, it provides a nuanced, comparative explanation. The findings demonstrate that, across countries, differences in actors' capacity and negotiated outcomes are attributable to the stability and depth of collective bargaining institutions. Within country differences are accounted for by the organisational resources (internal democracy, external links and pro‐activity) of local trade unions, which condition their capacity to induce management to negotiate outcomes which benefit both parties."

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