research
Transnational Firms and their Corporate Labor Policy: Case Studies on Philips and ING in the Netherlands and the United States, 1980–2010
- Publication date
- 28 June 2012
- Publisher
- In the last quarter of the 20th century, many firms significantly
expanded their operations across national borders. It has been
argued that, as a result, they have become disembedded from
the national economic fields in which they conduct their business
and have experienced a race to the bottom in their corporate
labor policy. This dissertation argues that this contention does
not accurately describe the recent development of transnational
firms and their corporate labor policy. Rather, transnational firms
experienced a significant shift in their dual embeddedness in
national and transnational economic fields. They were restructured
in line with the competitive conditions in the transnational
economic field, but the competitive conditions in the national
economic fields continue to be of great importance for their
corporate labor policy. Consequently, the recent development
of their corporate labor policy is characterized by processes of
centralization, instrumentalization, and polarization.