Enacting global competition in local supply chain environments: German “Chemieparks” and the micro-politics of employment relations in a CME

Drawing upon the debate on institutional mediation of macro processes, we examine how multinational enterprises (MNEs) engage with global competition through restructuring their operations situated in local supply chain environments and how employment relations (ER) of coordinated market economies are reconfigured in the course of this restructuring process. Our empirical setting is the German chemical industry which is both an exemplar of coordinated labour-management-collaboration and highly exposed to global competition. Using a comparative case study design, we observe how MNEs re-structure two local production sites into ‘Chemieparks’. Our empirical data suggest that local agency diverges in the extent to which the social partnership type of ER is maintained or disrupted. Furthermore, we highlight the importance of micro-political practices for understanding the restructuring outcome as well as the local enactment and change of macro institutions within production networks as meso-level arenas for institutional mediation

Agilität als (trans-)lokales Prinzip projektbasierter Arbeit? - Bedingungen und Prozesse prekärer Selbstorganisation

Agile Methoden wie Scrum können als Versuch einer räumlichen Teamzentrierung interpretiert werden, bei der - so unsere Ausgangsbeobachtung - die Lokalität des Teams als besonderer Status selbstorganisierter Arbeit ausgewiesen wird. Demgegenüber gibt es in der Praxis aufgrund dynamischer Organisation der Wertschöpfung zunehmend Ansätze zur Translokalisierung agil arbeitender Teams. Wir rücken daher die Frage, inwiefern agile Projektarbeit unter Bedingungen translokaler Organisation praktiziert wird, in den Mittelpunkt unseres Beitrags. Anhand von zwei Fallstudien in einem Großkonzern und einem KMU aus der Softwareentwicklung vergleichen wir die Unterschiede konkreter Projektarbeit unter lokalen und translokalen Bedingungen und zeigen die 'prekäre Selbstorganisation' agiler Teams auf. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass durch die Translokalisierung der Arbeit die Prozess- und Gegenstandsbezogenheit als zentraler Bestandteil agiler Selbstorganisation prekär werden. In den Unternehmen entwickeln sich im Angesicht dieser Herausforderungen analoge wie digitale Strategien, welche als Versuche zur Substitution von Lokalität betrachtet werden können.Scrum and other agile methods can be interpreted as a geographical focusing of teams, in which the locality of the team is seen as a central part of self-organized work. However, due to the dynamic organization of value creation in practice one can observe an increasing translocalization of agile teams. In the face of this contrary notion we focus the question on how agile project work is deployed under circumstances of translocal organization of work. Based on two case studies - in a corporation and SME - in the software industry we compare the conditions of concrete project work under circumstances of local and translocal organization. Moreover, we examine the effects of translocalization on the collaboration and the precarious self-organization of agile teams. The data shows that with the translocalization of work the process- and object-orientation as essential features of agile self-organisation become precarious. In the face of these challenges within the firms the actors develop strategies in order to make an attempt to substitute locality

Arbeitspolitische Verankerung des deutschen Windkraftanlagenbaus? Empirische Befunde zu ausgewählten Fallunternehmen

Über die personal- und arbeitspolitischen Besonderheiten in den Unternehmen der Erneuerbaren Energiewirtschaft ist vergleichsweise wenig bekannt. Dabei bieten insbesondere diese neu entstehenden bzw. entstandenen Branchen eine hervorragende Möglichkeit, die Verankerung in arbeitspolitischen Institutionen im Allgemeinen und im deutschen Kontext kollektiver Arbeitsbeziehungen im Besonderen zu erkunden. Der vorliegende Beitrag zielt daher auf die Beantwortung der Frage, ob und auf welche Weise im Zuge einer sich herausbildenden Personalpolitik auch eine arbeitspolitische Verankerung erfolgt und inwieweit inner- und überbetriebliche Kontextbedingungen auf diese Entwicklung einwirken.Knowledge about the specific characteristics of employment relations in the field of renewable energy is comparatively sparse. This holds despite the fact that especially newly emerging industries offer excellent possibilities to study the formation of employment relations in general and collective employment relations in particular. Therefore, this paper aims at shedding some light on the process of German firms’ embedding in industrial relations institutions by answering the question, whether and how extant forms of collective industrial relations get established within a process of an emerging HR policy and how firm- and inter-firm level contexts affect this development

The comparative institutional analysis of energy transitions

The discussion on ‘The comparative institutional analysis of energy transitions’ gives us a state-of-the-art overview of the main theoretical and conceptual developments within the field of political economy. It invites us to broaden our knowledge on the changing realities of different geographical regions in energy transition. In this discussion forum, Finnegan discusses emerging themes in the comparative political economy literature of climate change. He identifies gaps and offers an outline for further research. Allen, Allen, Cumming and Johan take a closer look at the links between different types of capitalism and the natural environment. The authors stress the importance of adopting an institutional perspective to explain differences in environmental outcomes. Wood compares the transitions of energy usage and mixes between liberal and coordinated market economies from a historical perspective. He looks for parallels between the energy transition from coal to oil and gas to the current renewables. Nicklich and Endo answer the question ‘Do globalization and globally perceived occurrences of environmental problems lead to a convergence of energy supply?’. They compare the fields of German and Japanese wind power with a particular focus on Greenpeace after the Fukushima disaster in 2011. Finally, Lim and Tanaka focus on the question ‘When do energy transition policies enjoy broad-based acceptance?’. They conclude that the public acceptance of energy transition varies between Western and non-Western societies

Organization of Value Creation and Work in the Japanese Wind Power Industry: Studying Organizational Diversity in Face of Institutional Change

Working paper on INCAS blog : https://incas.hypotheses.org/The Fukushima disaster of 2011 has changed the perspective on renewable energies, not least in Japan. Although the production of renewable energies has since then continuously increased in that country, too, Fukushima seems to have had a greater impact on other countries such as Germany, for example. Given the insight that emerging fields often form and change around particular events that create opportunities, we see institutional change in the field of Japanese energy production taking place. In particular, we are interested to learn about the scope, pace and trajectory of this change, how it is brought about, and whether this will result in more organizational diversity. Preliminary results show that there has been a rather endogenous change within the field of the Japanese energy sector, which was first and foremost initiated and managed by the incumbents of the field, thereby trying to preserve their position. This, however, might explain that change within the Japanese energy sector is most likely to remain incremental rather than transformative, also with regard to the organization of value creation and work

Qualitative Social Research at a Distance: Potentials and Challenges of Virtual Interviews

Qualitative Interviews haben pandemiebedingt eine Virtualisierung erfahren. Der Goldstandard der Face-to-Face-Interviews wurde in ein digitales Format übersetzt, d.h., Interviews werden auf Distanz geführt. Die Notwendigkeit, die Potenziale und Grenzen von Interviews auf Distanz zu reflektieren sowie epistemologische Konsequenzen zu bedenken, ist auch angezeigt, da sich sukzessive eine Normalisierung abzeichnet. Methodologische Fragen, die die empirischen Gegenstände selbst, die Fallauswahl, die konkreten Interviewsituationen und das technische Setting betreffen, sollen in Bezug auf ihre Vor- und Nachteile eruiert werden, um so eine Aussage treffen zu können, was als new normal gelten könnte.Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the practice of qualitative interviewing has recently undergone a strong trend toward virtualization. The gold standard of conducting face-to-face interviews had to be translated into a digital format, enabling researchers to conduct interviews at a distance. In this article, we reflect on the opportunities and limitations of virtual interviews and consider epistemological consequences in the wake of their increased use and acceptance. Methodological questions arise regarding empirical topics, sampling, social interview situations, as well as the technical setting. We further reflect on the advantages and disadvantages of interviews at a distance and suggest that this novel form of interviewing may soon become the new normal