Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

about by profit considerations in the first place and social norms matter insofar as they
influence the purchasing behaviour of customers. Most likely, those two factors are
intertwined: If companies comply with social expectations and norms, they are recognised
as a ´good practice´ company and visited by a higher number of customers. If, on the
contrary, companies do not respect those expectations, they run the risk of being listed in the
„Black Book of Brand Corporations”. Moreover, firms have sometimes to choose between
different efficiency considerations. E.g., firms may pursue their economic interest even if
they run the risk of sanctions by state actors. An example is the frequent bypassing of the
former § 147a SGB III in Germany, which ultimately had led to more leniency of the state
actors towards companies shedding their workforce (Teipen 2003: 88-9).
Because of those restrictions of the institutionalist approach, I lean towards a
combination of rational choice and institutional theories, as has been employed by
Mayntz/Scharpf (1995), Scharpf (1997) or Windhoff-Héritier (1991). That framework is
labelled ‘actor-centred institutionalism’ (Scharpf 1997, Mayntz/Scharpf 1995), ’rational
choice institutionalism’ (Thelen 1999) or given some other names depending on the
researcher (Scharpf 1997: 36). While institutionalism locates the central decision organ at
the societal macro level, actor-centred institutionalism stresses that partial power still
remains with the organisations. Scharpf (1997: 36) justifies the combination of actor-centred
and institution-centred models with the realisation that policy processes cannot be analysed
by institutional or rational-choice theories alone as that would reduce the analysis to one
dimension.
Scharpf (1997: 38) understands institutions in the narrow sense of “systems or rules that
structure the courses of actions that a set of actors may choose”, e.g. formal legal rules – in
my case, collective bargaining law, labour law, pension law, company law – as well as
“informal rules, norms, conventions, and expectations” of a normatively binding character.
The role of institutions is to delineate “the feasible set” of choices. Mayntz/Scharpf (1995:
43) delimit their concept from classic institutionalism with the fact that their framework
does not view institutional influence as deterministic and recognises influences of collective
actors upon institutions. Moreover, actor-centred institutionalism includes also nongovernmental
institutions in the observation.
The actor-centred institutionalism developed by Mayntz and Scharpf (1995) fits my idea
of the interactions between actors in the field of pension and labour market policy.
Following this approach, I view institutional factors (first and foremost the system of old-
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