Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

older workers, but I nevertheless uphold my assumption that that would be different in
firms with a no older workers at all (e.g. in greenfield foreign investments in Poland).
I concentrated on the manufacturing sector with a high share of manual work in order to
control for the difference in age-related risks in various production regimes (Frerichs 2002;
Rosenow/Naschold 1994: 41-44). The four firms from the services sector included in my
sample (only one in the Polish case) all had a short-term orientated, but integrative policy
towards older workers. The explanation could be that either the risks in the services sector
(here: post, banking, civil service, health insurance) are lower (however, Behrens (1999: 83)
regards banking as a highly burdening profession with “limited tenure”), or that firms in the
services sector hade developed better coping strategies.
I concentrated my studies on regions in Western Germany and Southern Poland with
average or higher than average unemployment rate (when compared to Western Germany,
resp. Poland). That way, I wanted to hold the labour market and economic conditions
constant. I however chose only firms which produce goods for the national or international
market. That way, I was able to integrate branches of multinational companies, and to
achieve more generalisable results. In the course of research, it emerged that the situation
on the labour market is not the only relevant structural factor, but likewise is the overall
infrastructure in the region which makes it interesting for foreign investors. Thus, those
Polish firms in my sample which are located in a region with worse infrastructure (and
which are not foreign-owned) have also a less developed and rather short-term orientated
personnel policy (see section 4.3.2.).
I did not include firms from Eastern Germany, as they have a different managerial and
economic tradition and different institutional legacies that would add, in fact, a third
country study to my research (Schuster/Stieler 1994; Büttner 2005a).
The last selection criterion was the presence of a workers´ representation in the firm
(shop-level trade unions or works councils). That served a heuristic function, as by
conducting interviews with both parties and collecting company agreements I was able to
gain a broader picture on company agency and cross-check declarations and actual practice.
Another reason was the expectation that, as trade unions have been active partners in many
European countries of management with regard to the use of early retirement for labour
shedding purposes (Ebbinghaus 2002; Gatter/Hartmann 1995: 420), the focus on companies
with employee representatives generated interesting material for the observation of
decision-making and bargaining at firm level. Moreover, there is hardly any large German
firm without a works council (Müller-Jentsch 2003: 48).
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