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Competing accounts of the effect of globalization on labor politics agree that firms influence regulations, but make contrasting predictions for which firms are most likely to oppose regulations. Using survey data from employers in 19,000 manufacturing firms in 82 developing countries, we examine the determinants of employers’ opinions toward labor regulation. In contrast to the predictions of optimistic theories of globalization, we find that (i) firms that export are more likely to have negative opinions toward labor regulation than those that sell domestically, and (ii) firms that receive foreign direct investment have similar views as firms that rely only on domestic capital. Further, we show that systematic differences in employers’ opinions depend on the intensity of the competitive pressures they face and their use of skilled workers. In doing so, we provide an empirically grounded account of the heterogeneous opinions of key actors in economic policymaking in developing countries.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2009., Cataloged from PDF version of thesis., Includes bibliographical references (p. 178-187)., This dissertation bridges the fields of international development, legal sociology, and organizational behavior to examine how Brazilian prosecutors enforce labor and environmental laws. Typically, the enforcement of protective regulations produces a range of outcomes. In some cases enforcers create major hurdles for business growth. In others, they overlook blatant violations and fail those interests they were supposed to protect. Yet, in some instances, enforcement agents find ways to reconcile compliance with competitiveness. What explains this variation? Why do these agents sometimes deepen existing conflicts and grant (temporary) victories to one of the parties, but in other occasions they engineer positive-sum outcomes? To answer this question I spent 18 months in the field and immersed myself in the life of the Brazilian procuracy. I interviewed more than 50 prosecutors, attended internal proceedings, and accompanied them as they attempted to enforce protective regulations. I also interviewed more than 100 representatives from government agencies, NGOs, industry associations, private firms, and labor unions from a cross-section of sectors in which actors struggled over the enforcement of labor and environmental laws. Eventually, I discovered that outcomes depended on prosecutors realizing that compliance requires costly and risky changes in business practices. Rather than prosecute, which they anticipate will eliminate jobs and undermine business profitability, or clarify the law, which they fear will be futile, these prosecutors reach out and assemble a network of institutions willing to cover some of the costs and insure some of the risks associated with compliance., (cont.) They lead an effort of inter-institutional root-cause analysis and joint-problem solving, and through this method they strive to make compliance the easiest choice for all involved. This study goes beyond showing that compliance can be reconciled with competitiveness. Rather, it hopes to redirect the attention of development experts away from pre-set ingredients, recipes, and best-practices and towards the organizational behavior of those front-line regulators who are out in the field, using their discretion to reshape businesses practices along more equitable and sustainable lines. These agents are the long arm of the state and their aggregate action can constitute the industrial policy of the 21 st century., by Salo Vinocur Coslovsky., Ph.D.

Dans cet article, nous développons trois exemples de ce que nous appelons des “Citoyens sociologues” (des employés chargés de vérifier le respect des normes de sécurité et de l’environnement, des procureurs et des cadres d’entreprise), qui considèrent leur travail et se considèrent eux-mêmes comme faisant partie d’un réseau complexe d’interactions et de processus, et non comme occupant un poste avec des intérêts et des responsabilités limités. Au lieu de se spécialiser étroitement, et de ne prendre en considération que de façon épisodique les connections plus larges et les répercussions de leurs actions, ces acteurs considèrent leur organisation ou leur état comme le résultat de décisions, d’indécisions, de processus d’essais et d’erreurs, et non comme le résultat d’une action rationnellement organisée . Dans cette entité dynamique, ils conçoivent leur propre rôle comme insignifiant en soi mais essentiel à l’ensemble. Nous situons d’abord cette observation dans la notion de fait social de Durkheim, puis nous faisons l’hypothèse que les sciences sociales du XXe siècle ont produit une conception réifiée des relations sociales qui masque inutilement ce travail quotidien de construction sociale dans la pratique. À l’inverse, une analyse partant de l’hypothèse d’un “Citoyen sociologue” permet d’explorer plus systématiquement les variations de performance des organisations. Nous suggérons, premièrement, que la perception de la structure de l’action sociale et des interdépendances relationnelles par les acteurs peut varier de manière prévisible. Deuxièmement, nous estimons que cette perception des interdépendances relationnelles peut affecter, à son tour, la performance des différents rôles., In this paper we describe three examples of what we call “the sociological citizen”, environmental health and safety workers, law enforcement officers, and firm managers who see their work and themselves as links in a complex web of interactions and processes rather than as offices of delimited responsibilities and interests. Instead of focusing closely and only sporadically taking account of the larger connections and reverberations of their actions, these actors view their organizations or states as the outcome of human decisions, indecisions, trial and error, rather than rationally organized action. In this dynamic entity, they reconceive their own role as insignificant by itself yet essential to the whole. We locate this observation first within Durkheim’s notion of social facts and later hypothesize that twentieth century social science may have contributed to reified conceptions of social relations unnecessarily obscuring this ground level everyday work of social construction. We offer this conception of the sociological citizen as a hypothesis with which to explore more systematically variations in organizational performances and outcomes. We suggest, first, that actors’perceptions of the structure of social action and relational interdependence will vary in perhaps predictable ways. Second, apprehension of relational interdependence will, in turn, affect role performances.