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Using data from the representative IAB Establishment Panel in Germany and estimating a heteroskedastic probit model with fixed effects, this paper finds a negative relationship between the existence of owner‐management in an establishment and the probabilities of having a works council or a collective bargaining agreement. We show that family firms which are solely managed by the owners or by external executives significantly differ in the presence of these kinds of worker representation. The probabilities of having works councils and (company‐level) collective agreements increase substantially if just some of the managers do not belong to the owner family. We argue that these differences cannot simply be attributed to an aversion of the owners against co‐determination and unions but suggest taking account of the notion of socio‐emotional wealth prevalent in family firms. In addition, our results support the idea that external managers mainly act as agents rather than stewards in family firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent article entitled ‘The Erosion of Industrial Relations in Germany’, Anke Hassel (1999) claimed that German industrial relations have been eroded during the last two decades. This paper questions the argument, maintaining that Germany's basic industrial relations system remains intact and that the major changes in Germany relate to unification and the public sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In her recent survey, Carola Frege concludes that economic analysis of the works council has reached a ‘dead end’. The present paper offers a very different assessment. The evolving economic literature is shown to follow three distinct phases, the last of which contains some of the most positive evaluations to date of works council impact on establishment performance. Although these estimates are exaggerated, and the effects of works councils are likely to be small on average, the new literature redirects our research focus towards factors producing swings around this average, including differences in works council types and their workplace environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the debate on union strategies by analysing industrial relations change in three of Germany's most internationalized sectors: chemicals, metalworking and construction. It characterizes two logics of change in German industrial relations: a battlefield logic and an experimentalist logic. It demonstrates historical trends towards centralization of wage bargaining in each sector before looking at recent pressures for decentralization and flexibility. In chemicals, the social partners control decentralization. In metalworking increasing flexibility is characterized by a mismatch between the national-level union and the district-level employers. Finally, the construction union seeks to replace the centralized bargaining system with a state minimum wage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a brief review of the empirical evidence on union productivity effects in Germany. The influence of trade unions on productivity is the net effect of conflicting forces which can lead to higher or lower productivity. Although the German dual system of workers' representation via unions and works councils is quite favourable to the existence of productivity-enhancing 'voice' effects, various empirical studies have not been able to detect significant positive net effects of these institutions on productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employee involvement is a contested concept in organizations. While the mainstream of the research debate has focused on measuring the strength of employee involvement (EI), this article emphasizes the existence of very different forms of EI. It draws on case studies of the German, Brazilian and Chinese plants of a German automobile manufacturer to analyse forms of EI and to investigate their societal determinants. The article reveals considerable differences in the design of employee involvement between the self-organization model and the competition/social involvement model. It shows how industrial relations and cultural factors lead to these very different approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the micro-level rule enactment of the posting of workers framework in the German construction sector. I examine how actors draw on different power resources in order to influence policies without formal negotiation within transnational workspaces and thereby initiate institutional change. Drawing on interviews with posted workers, managers, unionists, works councillors and labour inspectors I show how transnational subcontracting allows the emergence of different regulatory spaces at national and workplace level. The article concludes that the informal renegotiation of employment relations in transnational workspaces is likely to destabilize the posting framework negotiated at policy level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most Continental European labour markets and welfare states have experienced a substantial transformation. Germany is a case in point as it exhibits increasing levels of employment and a growing share of low pay and non-standard work. The article claims that changes in labour market institutions play a major role, but changes in industrial relations at the sectoral level and individual firms' staffing practices are equally important. Regarding labour market institutions, the pattern found in Germany shows sequences of reforms addressing the margins of the labour market and contributing to a growing dualization of employment. This dualization trend was reinforced by micro-level dynamics in industrial relations and company employment practices, where we can observe growing reliance on mechanisms of internal flexibility for the skilled core workforce and increasing use of non-standard types of employment in less specifically skilled occupations, in particular in the private service sector. Hence, the adjustment of the German model can only be understood by taking into account the interaction of policy change and actors' adaptive behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapidly changing markets in the context of globalization call for increasingly frequent restructuring to sustain the competitiveness of individual firms. To meet this need while minimizing consequent job loss, the social partners in major European countries have devised a variety of decentralization mechanisms that enhance local-level flexibility without fundamentally calling into question the traditional national models of collective bargaining. Analysing the use of “opening clauses” in German industry agreements, France's firm-level “derogation agreements” and mandatory bargaining on “workforce planning”, and Italy's tripartite “territorial agreements”, the author concludes with a plea for a supranational framework to support socially sensitive restructuring across Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is concerned with the recent merger of five German unions to form the new multi-industry union, ver.di. Its focus is on the effects of the merger and on developments in the post-merger phase. The article explores the various internal problems of the new union, concentrating on those that flow from the adoption of a matrix form of organisation. It deals also with the external relations of ver.di, with other unions and with the central organisation of German trade unions, the DGB. Central conclusions here are that the creation of ver.di is likely to exacerbate competition amongst German unions and further erode the position of the peak association. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the existing English- and German-speaking literature on the German works council. Three major research topics are discussed: the ontology and typologies of works councils; their current practice and transformation; and their economic outcomes. Although much research has been conducted on the internal functioning of the works council—management relationship, it is clear that we still know little about the determinants of different workplace relations and their outcomes. The article concludes by advocating a reviving research interest in the link between codetermination and political democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Replies to a critique of the author's article on the stability of the German system of industrial relations. Thomas Klikauer's criticism of erosion thesis; Three-point reply.

Studies the role of `vanguard' subsidiaries in the United Kingdom as access points for multinational companies (MNC) in Germany to innovative practices in the human resource management and industrial relations fields. Content of reverse diffusion from vanguard divisions; Mechanisms that MNCs are using to disseminate practices to other parts of the corporation.

Assesses trajectories of change in the German system of industrial relations. Analysis of co-determination and collective bargaining systems; Parallel developments that undermine the stability of the German industrial relations system; Impact of German unification; Prospects for a successful model of co-operative modernization.

Examines the possibility of a transformation for company-specific and unitarist industrial relations in Germany. Case studies of employment practices in Germany; Stability of the German system; Compliance with the labor market institutions of multi-employer collective bargaining, workplace representation and initial vocational training.

The trade unions in the steel industry have faced two waves of restructuring, the first centering on closures, capacity reductions and mass redundancies, the second involving fundamental changes to patterns of work organization, labour utilization and industrial relations. Overall, the trade unions involved have failed to develop an adequate response to management-led change, relying instead on traditional methods and lines of interest representation. The challenges embodied in such developments as teamworking and craft restructuring are considered, together with union responses and the structural and ideological constraints on those responses. Contrasts are drawn with more successful union involvement in comparable changes in the German steel industry. In the conclusion, the authors review the dilemmas facing the UK unions in the steel industry and the main areas for a new agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the existence of an outstanding organizational difference in worker representation for Germany and Japan. The unions in Japan represent the workers in all labor issues. Employee representation in Germany is separated from the collective bargaining over wages. The participation rights of the work councils are regulated.

On the basis of fieldwork conducted during June 1992 and 1993, this study examines outcomes of two recent vocational training policies in South Korea, cooperative training, and ChangWon Industrial Masters' College. It was found that these two policies, seeking to imitate the German dual vocational training model, failed to produce the industrial skills sought. These outcomes can be explained by examining two social contexts surrounding the policies in comparison with those in Germany: the exclusive role of the government in industrial relations, and a minimal interest in skill formation by manufacturing firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the concept of union commitment in a German sample utilizing research predominantly developed and tested in Anglo-American countries (U.S.A., Canada, South Africa). Due to cultural and structural differences in the context of German unions it was assumed that the structure and level of commitment should also be different from those in the countries tested and that the instrument may have to be adjusted. Gordon and Ladd's Union Commitment scale was translated and tested on 194 West-German trade union members. Five major structural differences between German, Canadian, U.S.-American and South African unions were identified. Those are, for example, in Germany closed-shop agreements are forbidden, a high degree of centralization exists, the existence and form of labor courts and legally binding participation, the influence of workers council and the well protected situation of German workers. The data were factor-analyzed and revealed four factors. A comparison of the item structures showed that the German sample put a much stronger emphasis on the factor 1: Union Instrumentality and less emphasis on factor 4: Union Loyalty than the previously examined samples where union loyalty always emerged as the strongest factor. The other factors were identified as: factor 2: Prounion Behavioral Intentions and factor 3: Union Trust. The results are discussed in relation to structural differences that may have led to findings in the German sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the political dilemma of German trade unionism. The political problem of unionism is indeed coeval with the existence of unionism itself. If the problem looms larger now, it is because unionism has attained a position of considerable power. In the industrialized countries of today, unions present sizeable aggregates of economic power. Modern democratic society sanctions this concentration of economic power as a proper counterpoise against the concentrated power of corporate industry, thereby assuring approximate equality in bargaining power in the conference room. In 1953 the German Federation of Trade Unions (DGB) issued a manifesto to German Labor. The occasion was the election of a new Bundestag. The manifesto was the usual kind of election appeal. It reiterated in rapid fire, electioneering style the union demands for full employment, for a comprehensive housing program, for a higher standard of living, for progressive social insurance and for an over-all democratization of economic life.

The article focuses on the ideology of the Federation of the German Employers' Associations (BDA). In 1949 the Federation of German Employers' Associations was established as the central federation of West German employers' associations. With its creation the West German business community virtually completed the revival of the employers' association structure which had been abolished in 1933 by the National Socialist government. However, in contrast with the pre-1933 federation of the same name, the BDA includes within its membership not only employers' associations in industry, but those also in banking, insurance, transportation, handicrafts, commerce, and agriculture. The primary task of the member associations of the BDA is to represent management in the collective bargaining procedure, which is conducted generally within each land on a multi-employer basis. The BDA challenges the economic efficiency of comprehensive State planning. No economic plan, it argues, is infallible. But the very fact that the plan will contain fallacies and shortcomings will lead to further planning. Thus, inherent in State planning is an ever-expanding activity, which finally embraces the totality of economic, political, and social life.

The article informs that there has been a strong movement for the socialization of industry in Germany since the 2nd World War. In a sense, this is part of a broader effort to "extend democracy into the workshop" which, in some areas of Germany, has already resulted in a radical departure from the organization and control of industry that formally prevailed. The program includes, among other aspects, decartelization and efforts at extending the principle of co-determination to works councils. While decartelization involves the breaking up of large, monopolistic industrial units, co-determination means elevating representatives of workers to equal rights with employers in the determination of economic, production and financial policies for industry and the economy generally. A public opinion poll on socialization was taken by the Information Control Branches of the American and British Military Governments in February, 1948. The results, as released, did not provide information on the techniques employed in conducting the survey other than the fact that the polls were carried on independently of one another.

The article focuses on the changing status of German farm labor in the interwar period. In the first stage, during the imperial regime, the employer-employee relation in eastern Germany still showed feudal traces although the development from status to contract was well under way. In the second stage, the period of democracy, all legal remnants of feudalism were wiped out, the farm worker was included in all labor laws, attempts were made to abolish differences between his status and that of the industrial worker. In the third period the Nazis, by stressing the public character of the work, reversed the former trend and inaugurated a development from contract to status. In the regions of small farming the distinction between farmer and worker was not clear cut. The small farmer could be a worker intermittently. There was no social gap between those who employed and those who provided labor. In fact, the peasant was the most hard working laborer. With the growing industrialization of Germany, from the Seventies of the nineteenth century on, the agricultural segment decreased. This phenomenon which appears in all industrializing countries, took on special features in Eastern Germany.