Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

Therefore, I can generalise my results to large industrial enterprises (with between 400
and 5,000 employees) in Western Germany and which have a works council which
represents workers´ interests and which are affiliated to an employers´ association. My
analysis can be furthermore generalised to large Polish companies with at least 200 workers
which have a shop-level trade union. It can also be generalised to Polish firms bought up by
foreign companies (not to greenfield investments, which usually have a young age structure
and no workers´ representation).
The generalisability of my findings is increased due to the qualitative panel character.
The two interview waves in Germany were 2.5 till 3 years apart, in Poland I conducted one
interview wave with managers and another, one year later, with trade unionists. That way, I
was able to observe dynamic developments under various institutional and structural
circumstances, e.g. the backing off from innovative personnel policies when faced with a
downward economic trend. The reliability of my findings is to some extent reduced due to
the current situation of economic transformation in Poland, accompanied on the one hand
by large-scale personnel reductions (Góra 2000), but on the other hand by higher economic
growth than in Germany and other Western European countries (5.6% economic growth in
Poland, 0.8% in Germany in the third quarter of 2008; Eurostat News Release 4 th Dec.
2008).
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