Статьи
Всего статей в данном разделе : 4
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Опубликовано на портале: 25-11-2008
Gregory Jackson
RIETI Discussion Paper.
2004.
No. 04-E-022 .
This article examines the role of ambiguity in processes of institutional change. One challenge for understanding institutional change is to overcome the rather "oversocialized" view of action within Institutional theory. Drawing upon recent work in sociology, the paper introduces a non-teleological model of action that stresses the ambiguity of institutionalized beliefs. Ambiguity is then applied to Masahiko Aoki's concept of institutions as "summary representation" of a strategic game. Rather than institutional break down, ambiguity is associated with incremental modes of institutional change through creative reinterpretation and redeployment of old institutions for new purposes. Empirically, the paper applies these considerations to understanding the historical evolution of employee codetermination in Germany. The continuity in formal legal rules of codetermination contrasts with remarkable diversity as an organizational practice-over time, across industrial sectors and between individual firms. Codetermination illustrates how ambiguity originated in political compromise, but also how ambiguous agreement allows scope for institutional innovation. Ambiguity is, thus, central for understanding how codetermination was partially reproduced and partially changed over time.


Опубликовано на портале: 25-03-2008
Robert Boyer
PSE Working Papers.
2006.
No. 2006-21.
This paper challenges the conventional wisdom that the dynamism of employment is
always
contradictory to the enforcement of some forms of security for workers. Contemporary
theorizing now recognizes the specificity of the wage-labour nexus. Consequently,
minimum
security is required for good economic performance by firms and national economies.
A
comparative analysis of OECD countries shows that the extended security promoted
by welfare
systems has not been detrimental to innovation, growth and job creation. Developing
countries
cannot immediately catch up with the emerging standards of flexicurity but the methodology
of
employment diagnosis might help them in designing security/flexibility configurations
tailored
according to their domestic economic specialization, social values and political
choices.


Опубликовано на портале: 07-02-2008
Wolfgang Streeck
MPIfG Working Paper.
2003.
No. 03/2.
The paper is a contribution to a book edited by Simon Green and Willie Paterson, Semi-sovereignty Revisited: Governance, Institutions and Policies in United Germany (2005). It explores to what extent Peter Katzenstein's seminal study of the "semi-sovereign" German state in the 1980s is still valid. The paper looks at one of the showpieces of Katzenstein's theory of beneficial semi-sovereignty, German industrial relations, and follows their development from the Modell Deutschland of the 1976 election campaign to Schröder's Bündnis für Arbeit. It comes to the conclusion that as far as Germany is concerned, the days are gone when it was an advantage for the governance of industrial relations to have a weak state.


Опубликовано на портале: 25-03-2008
Robert Boyer
PSE Working Papers.
2005.
No. 2005-39.
Contrary to the prognosis derived from the variety of capitalism literature, since
the mid-90s
the significant restructuring of large German corporations in the direction of shareholder
value
seems to have been compatible with the persistence of a genuine configuration of
industrial
relations, including co-determination at the firm level. This article investigates
whether this is a
long lasting compatibility and tests various research programs in institutional economics
and thus
explores the consequences alternative hypotheses about institutional complementarity
or
hierarchy, comparative institutional analysis, comparative historical analysis, hybridization
and
finally régulation theory. Even if the process is highly uncertain, one major
conclusion emerges: the
old German model is probably irreversibly transformed and is evolving towards an
unprecedented configuration, with only mild and distant relations to a typical liberal
brand of
capitalism.

