Roles and Rules: Ambiguity, Experimentation and New Forms of Stakeholderism in Germany

"A reified opposition between social cooperation (stakeholderism) and Neoliberal market solutions paralyzes political and scientific debate on reform in Germany today. This essay rejects that opposition by recasting the way in which each of the categories is understood. Pressure to become more flexible in many areas of work and organizational life has not given rise to a blanket embrace of “the market” on a local level. Instead, it has induced widespread experimentation with alternative forms of workplace and firm governance that involve continual and collaborative recomposition of stakeholder roles in and among firms and social actors. In other words, stakeholder governance is not disintegrating or giving way to the market in Germany. It is being redefined. Experimentation with roles and rules by creative actors drives the alternative analysis. The argument is developed empirically by a discussion of current local trends in the system of industrial relations." (author's abstract)"Der Gegensatz zwischen Sozialpartnerschaft auf der einen Seite und neoliberalem Vermarktlichungsansatz auf der anderen paralysiert die politische wie wissenschaftliche Debatte in Deutschland. Dieser Essay widerspricht dieser pauschalen Entgegensetzung, indem er fordert, diese Kategorien neu zu fassen. Der Druck zur stärkeren Flexibilisierung von Arbeit und Organisation hat nicht zu einer pauschalen Umarmung „des Marktes“ auf lokaler Ebene geführt. Vielmehr hat er vielfältige Experimente mit alternativen Formen der Arbeits- und Unternehmensorganisation ausgelöst – einschließlich der kontinuierlichen und kollaborativen Rekomposition der verschiedenen Stakeholderrollen in und zwischen Unternehmen und anderen gesellschaftlichen Akteuren. Mit anderen Worten: „stakeholder governance“ disintegriert nicht oder löst sich in marktförmige Koordination auf, sie wird vielmehr nur redefiniert. Die Experimente kreativer Akteure mit Rollen und Regeln treibt diese Entwicklung. Das Argument wird auf der Basis empirischer Einsichten in gegenwärtige lokale Entwicklungen des Systems industrieller Beziehungen in Deutschland entwickelt." (Autorenreferat

Thoughts on the potential consequences of the current process of industrial transformation in the West German political economy

Series statements handwritten on t.p. -- from publisher's lists"Presented at the Political Economy Seminar Series, November, 1989."Includes bibliographical references (leaf 16

Problems with the German model : a dissertation overview

"May 1988."Series from publisher's list"This paper was given as a talk to the Student Political Economy Seminar Series at the Center for International Studies at MIT, April 8, 1988."Includes bibliographical reference

European market integration and the political economy of corporate adjustment: OTE and Telecom Italia, 1949-2009

Despite the common challenges posed by European market integration and liberalisation, the behaviour of telecommunications operators across Europe suggests a variety of modes of adjustment and paths to privatisation. The article examines the puzzle of divergent responses to liberalisation by OTE and Telecom Italia (TI), casting light on their distinct paths to privatisation and internationalisation. The cases are considered in the context of the Varieties of Capitalism frame, which challenges the perspective that global market integration will lead to convergence in strategies and structures. Thus, the article suggests that the observed differences are largely explained by the domestic actors' preferences, and to a much lesser extent attributed to the globalising forces of technological change and competition

Varieties of Vertical Disintegration: The Global Trend Toward Heterogeneous Supply Relations and the Reproduction of Difference in US and German Manufacturing

As is well known, there is a global trend toward vertical disintegration in manufacturing. Large manufacturing firms, across a broad array of industrial sectors, are radically reducing the amount of their product that they both produce and design themselves. Instead they are turning to suppliers for key design, component, and even system in-puts. This shift has created a great deal of business for specialized suppliers in a vast array of areas throughout the global manufacturing economy. But it has also created an entirely new and challengin--often quite contradictory--terrain of relations between suppliers and their customers. Our claim in this chapter is that rlations between suppliers and customers in manufacturing are becoming systematically more heterogeneous within all advanced industrial societies. Further, this global trend is exacerbated by the diversity of institutional architectures and production practices in different political economies. In making this argument, we show that neither neo-liberal nor particular forms of institutionalist arguments (in particular the Varieties of Capitalism perspective) adequately capture current global dynamics in manufacturing