Interest Representation on National and Transnational Levels of Action: Restructuring of Companies and the Problem of Articulation

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Thomas Haipeter
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2014 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 262236404

In multinational companies, interest representation of employees takes place on a multitude of levels of action, starting with local works councils and ending with international bodies of interest representation like European works councils. Indeed there is a huge body of literature dealing with local works councils and European works councils. However, only little research has focused on intermediary bodies like company or groups works councils. Moreover, the interplay between the different levels of interest representation, among them also codetermination on supervisory boards and unions, has been largely neglected in research, and their modes of interaction have not been conceptualized and analyzed systematically yet. There are two research desiderata that stem from this fact. Firstly, the construction, coordination and intermediation of collective interests was not captured adequately. Secondly, problems of legitimacy, which cross-border representation bodies might show towards employees of different countries and locations because of their institutional distance to local actors, were neglected. Therefore, the project extends the analytical perspective by analyzing the interplay and coordination processes, the processes of articulation, between different institutions and actors at different levels of an international corporation. The focus of the project is on the entire system of interest regulation at local, national, and supra-national level. Our research interest is to analyze the coordination processes between the representation levels in theoretically grounded empirical case studies. Doing this, the project seeks to increase scientific knowledge about interest regulation practice in international corporations and to contribute to theory development within the sociology of work and organizations as well as industrial relations. The empirical part is composed of case studies in nine companies of three different industries. The focus of the case studies is on examples of restructuring cases which are accompanied by negotiations about outsourcing, dismissals or the reduction of labour standards. On the one hand, restructuring starkly affects employees local interests. On the other hand and at the same time, the need for a coordination of interests across the levels is particularly high. The case studies cover locations in three countries of the respective international company. Expert interviews are conducted with employee representatives at different levels (e.g. works councils, company and group works councils, EWCs and world works councils), trade union and management representatives. The study seeks to identify empirical interaction patterns between the levels, using an ideal type of transnational advocacy and explaining them with reference to various influence factors.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants