Sociology

This article applies sociological neo-institutionalism to help understand transnational trade union wage policy. We review existing approaches to the role of trade unions as organizational actors in wage bargaining coordination and contrast these with the concepts of organizational fields and institutional work. Besides structural and associational power, transnational institutions are also able to increase the ability and willingness of unions to act transnationally. We draw empirical evidences from existing studies on European wage bargaining coordination in metalworking.

Notwithstanding ongoing processes of liberalisation and disorganisation in all capitalist economies, Austrian Corporatism has been found to display a remarkable resilience across distinct institutional fields. The focus of this article is on the role of social actors in (re)producing or changing institutional structures and practices of Austrian Corporatism. In the four fields investigated, i.e., economic and social policy making, collective wage bargaining, employment relations at enterprise level and vocational education and training, collective actors have contributed to an institutional conversion of corporatist institutions towards new purposes in an internationalised context rather than to institutional erosion. However, during the government coalition of the Conservative People's Party and the right-wing populist Freedom Party (2000-2006) it became clear that the normative commitment to Social Partnership would reach the limits of its capacity if the power-balance shifted towards a more neoliberal stance. Non-market institutions are therefore seen as providing 'borrowed stability' rather than a robust basis for the resilience of Austro Corporatism. Trade unions in particular are required to shift their orientation towards their membership and find new ways of combining their role as Social Partnership organisations and social movements in order to safeguard non-market institutions. Schlüsselwörter Austria, collective wage bargaining, industrial relations, initial vocational education and training, public policy making, social partnership, varieties-of-capitalism Österreichischer Korporatismus-Erosion oder Resilienz? Zusammenfassung Ungeachtet der fortdauernden Liberalisierungs-und Desorganisierungsprozesse in allen kapitalistischen Ökonomien weist der österreichische Korporatismus eine erstaunliche Resilienz über verschiedene institutionelle Felder auf. Der Aufsatz fokussiert auf die Rolle von sozialen Akteuren in der (Re-)Produktion oder dem Wandel von institutionellen Strukturen und Praktiken des österreichischen Korporatismus. In den vier untersuchten Feldern, d.h. der Wirtschafts-und Sozialpolitik, kollektiver Lohnverhandlungen, der Arbeitsbeziehungen auf Betriebsebene und der beruflichen Aus-und Weiterbildung, haben kollektive Akteure nicht zu institutioneller Erosion, sondern zu einer institutionellen Konversion von korporatistischen Institutionen in Richtung neuer Ziele in einem internationalen Kontext beigetragen. Während der Regierungskoalition der konservativen Volkspartei und der rechtsstehenden, populistischen Freiheitlichen Partei (2000-2006) wurde allerdings deutlich, dass das normative Bekenntnis zur Sozialpartnerschaft dann an seine Grenzen stößt, wenn sich das Machtgleichgewicht zugunsten einer stärker neoliberalen Position verschiebt. Nicht-marktbestimmte Institutionen stellen daher eher eine ‚geliehene Stabilität" zur Verfügung, als eine robuste Basis für eine Resilienz des Austro-Korporatismus. Gewerkschaften sind im Besonderen gefordert ihre Aufmerksamkeit auf ihre Mitglieder zu richten und neue Wege zu finden, wie sie ihre Rolle als Sozialpartnerschaftsorganisationen und soziale Bewegungen kombinieren können, um die nichtmarktbestimmten Institutionen zu bewahren.

This article addresses trade union membership policies in the hospital sector and contrasts the situations in the United Kingdom and Germany, countries with different varieties of capitalism. It draws on industrial relations scholarship that is interested in the diversity of modern capitalist economies and their industrial relations institutions.1 Departing from a macro-social perspective, these studies revealed the important insight that trade union strategies and practices are influenced by national institutions, but not fully determined by them. This article is also inspired by social movement literature that has developed a perspective on micro-social processes and emphasizes the importance of union actors’ identities and framing processes.2 Yet, we assume that union membership policies can neither be solely explained by macro-determinants such as the institutions of national political economies nor by a focus on trade unions as entrepreneurial actors in shaping their own destin...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to clarify the relationship of highly skilled work and (collective) power. It develops an institutional logics perspective and argues that highly skilled workers’ propensity to join trade unions varies by institutional order. Design/methodology/approach – Data from two occupational fields in Austria, university professors and management consultants, representing two different institutional orders were collected via questionnaires. Stepwise logistic regression analysis was employed to test the hypotheses. Findings – The results show that over and above organisational level variables, individual's background and employee power variables institutional logics significantly add to explaining trade union membership of highly skilled workers. Prevalence of a professional logic in a field makes collective action more likely than market logic. Originality/value – Highly skilled workers are overall described as identifying themselves more with the go...

This article applies sociological neo-institutionalism to help understand transnational trade union wage policy. We review existing approaches to the role of trade unions as organizational actors in wage bargaining coordination and contrast these with the concepts of organizational fields and institutional work. Besides structural and associational power, transnational institutions are also able to increase the ability and willingness of unions to act transnationally. We draw empirical evidences from existing studies on European wage bargaining coordination in metalworking.

Trade unions across Europe have pursued various strategies in their attempt to revitalize. Austria’s largest trade union has chosen to broaden its membership base by organizing and representing new membership groups such as dependent self-employed workers. We argue that this new category of workers poses a distinct challenge to a union’s identity, since their heterogeneous and highly individualized working conditions contribute to very individualistic personality traits. This article draws a picture of identity conceptions, normative orientations and prospective behaviour of dependent self-employed workers towards unions and suggests union strategies to deal with them.

Knowledge workers are often considered to prefer an individual rather than a collective articulation of their interests. This phenomenon is primarily explained by their individualistic orientation and power derived from possessing scarce knowledge. However, highly skilled work is a very heterogeneous field. In order to understand the diverse experiences of highly skilled employees and their attitudes towards collective action, this article proposes a model based on the juxtaposition of professional and knowledge work that entails three distinct logics of control over knowledge: professionalism, market closure and bureaucracy. The forms of collective action (i.e. intra-group solidarity, inter-group solidarity, no solidarity) are predicted to vary contingent on the prevailing position within a field. The model is illustrated by the example of university and non-university research in Austria. Professional self-control of scientific knowledge has been partly replaced by bureaucratic co...

In a society where knowledge has become the main factor of production, intellectual property rights are an important issue in social conflicts. However, in the current debate about the reform of intellectual property (IP) law, the trade unions are playing hardly any role, although the new regulations have an impact on employed and self-employed workers as well as on the power relationship of labor and capital. This article is intended to provide a theoretical discussion of IP law issues in the context of labor market changes. Using the example of software production, the article raises two questions: What kinds of strategies does management apply to control and exploit knowledge workers? How do software patents and free software practices affect their workplace rights? The article deals with these issues on the European Union (EU) and the national level by focusing on the role and behavior of German and Austrian unions. Although these unions have become increasingly aware of the impact of IP law, they are struggling to find a common position that is fitted to defend the rights of their highly skilled (potential) members. We conclude that unions should refrain from a blind adherence to strong intellectual property rights. They should rather contribute to the creation of a new balance between free access to knowledge and culture and the protection of the individual rights of workers.

Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public.

Die Transformation hierarchischer betrieblicher Steuerung in relationalen Vertrags- und Tauschbeziehungen hat in vielen europäischen Ländern zu einer Zunahme abhängiger Selbständigkeit geführt. Aufgrund des Graubereichs zwischen selbständiger und unselbständiger Beschäftigung stellen abhängig Selbständige eine Herausforderung für die traditionellen Handlungs- und Organisationslogiken der Verbände der Arbeitsbeziehungen dar. Der Aufsatz nimmt die Organisationsfähigkeit und -probleme der Gewerkschaften und Wirtschaftsverbände in den Blick, exemplifiziert diese anhand einer qualitativen Untersuchung der österreichischen Privatversicherungswirtschaft und kommt zu dem Schluss, dass die Konflikte zwischen Arbeit und Kapital längst nicht mehr ausschließlich zwischen Gewerkschaften und Arbeitgeberverbänden verlaufen, sondern zunehmend verbandsintern ausgetragen werden. Dies führt entweder zu einer Zunahme an Interessensdivergenzen, die unter Umständen mit Abspaltung und Partikularismus einz...

Ungeachtet der fortdauernden Liberalisierungs- und Desorganisierungsprozesse in allen kapitalistischen Ökonomien weist der österreichische Korporatismus eine erstaunliche Resilienz über  verschiedene institutionelle Felder auf. Der Aufsatz fokussiert auf die Rolle von sozialen Akteuren in der (Re-)Produktion oder dem Wandel von institutionellen Strukturen und Praktiken des österreichischen Korporatismus. In den vier untersuchten Feldern, d.h. der Wirtschafts- und Sozialpolitik, kollektiver Lohnverhandlungen, der Arbeitsbeziehungen auf Betriebsebene und der beruflichen Aus- und Weiterbildung, haben kollektive Akteure nicht zu institutioneller Erosion, sondern zu einer institutionellen Konversion von korporatistischen Institutionen in Richtung neuer Ziele in einem internationalen Kontext beigetragen. Während der Regierungskoalition der konservativen Volkspartei und der rechtsstehenden, populistischen Freiheitlichen Partei (2000-2006) wurde allerdings deutlich, dass das normative Beken...

Klages sowie den zwei anonymen Gutachtern. © WSI Mitteilungen 2015 Diese Datei und ihr Inhalt sind urheberrechtlich geschützt. Nachdruck und Verwertung (gewerbliche Vervielfältigung, Aufnahme in elektronische Datenbanken, Veröffentlichung online oder offline) sind nicht gestattet.

Author(s): Pernicka, Susanne | Abstract: The entry of digital platform corporations, such as Uber, Lyft, and Taxify, into established taxi and limousine markets has severely challenged organized interest groups on both sides of the capital-labor divide as well as public policymakers who regulate these markets. Interest associations in different countries have regarded the market-disrupting strategies of platform corporations as either a unifying threat or as an opportunity to pursue and enforce their particularistic interests, and existing associational fields have shaped interest associations’ responses.The author compares California and Austria because of their distinctive traditions in valorizing the public participation of nonstate societal groups and interest associations in political and economic fields. By drawing on interest group theory and on sociological field theory, this paper demonstrates that both pluralist and neocorporatist associational fields have the potential to...

Nutzungsbedingungen: Dieser Text wird unter einer Deposit-Lizenz (Keine Weiterverbreitung-keine Bearbeitung) zur Verfügung gestellt. Gewährt wird ein nicht exklusives, nicht übertragbares, persönliches und beschränktes Recht auf Nutzung dieses Dokuments. Dieses Dokument ist ausschließlich für den persönlichen, nicht-kommerziellen Gebrauch bestimmt. Auf sämtlichen Kopien dieses Dokuments müssen alle Urheberrechtshinweise und sonstigen Hinweise auf gesetzlichen Schutz beibehalten werden. Sie dürfen dieses Dokument nicht in irgendeiner Weise abändern, noch dürfen Sie dieses Dokument für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, aufführen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Mit der Verwendung dieses Dokuments erkennen Sie die Nutzungsbedingungen an. Terms of use: This document is made available under Deposit Licence (No Redistribution-no modifications). We grant a non-exclusive, nontransferable, individual and limited right to using this document. This document is solely intended for your personal, noncommercial use. All of the copies of this documents must retain all copyright information and other information regarding legal protection. You are not allowed to alter this document in any way, to copy it for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the document in public, to perform, distribute or otherwise use the document in public. By using this particular document, you accept the above-stated conditions of use.

This working paper adopts sociological Neo-Institutionalism to devise a theoretical framework of trade union strategies in the context of international and European wage competition, European Monetary Union and the recent economic crisis. The main focus is on trade unions’ contributions, i.e. institutional work, to the creation and maintenance of industrial relations institutions of wage bargaining coordination at European level, and hence, on the possible emergence of an organisational field of European wage policy. In empirical terms the paper takes a longitudinal perspective on the development of cross-national wage bargaining coordination in the metalworking sector. The paper concludes that normative and cultural-cognitive institutions have contributed to the ability and willingness of trade unions to engage in the creation and maintenance of transnational wage related institutions (such as bargaining guidelines) and hence, horizontal Europeanization. However, two research outco...

Knowledge workers are often expected to prefer an individual rather than a collective articulation and enhancement of their interests. In the literature this phenomenon is primarily explained by individualistic orientations and power sources derived from the possession of scarce knowledge. New forms of market-oriented corporate management are assumed to contribute to workers’ individualistic perceptions and put the necessity and legitimacy of collective action into question. We advocate a more sophisticated perspective on the dominant logics of control of knowledge intensive work. Based on assumptions of neoweberian theory and the sociology of professions we propose a conceptual framework of three ideal typical logics of control (professionalism, market, bureaucracy) and their impact on the ability and willingness to organize collectively. The plausibility of the model is tested by empirically investigating university and non-university research in Austria. At the university, for in...