Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

2.5. Conclusions
The depicted theoretical approaches describe different aspects of the policy domain of
early exit as depicted in my analytical models (Fig. 1 and 2 in chapter 2. and Fig. 3 in
section 3.1.). Some are contradictory – e.g. the neo-classical approach and the firmstructural
approach in the section on company-level theories – but the contradiction
nevertheless reflects firm behaviour, in which diverging actions and motives are present.
Although the early exit issue can be studied at three levels (the macro level of
institutions and structures, the meso level of branches, and the micro level of establishments
and individual workers), I will concentrate on the institutional and on the company level.
For this purpose, several of the depicted theories, frameworks and theses will be helpful.
The institutional framework, and above all the actor-centred institutionalism, will serve as a
basis for defining hypotheses at the establishment and the national level. The pathdependence
thesis offers insight into the phenomenon that some institutional conditions
prevail and are hard to revert despite not being the optimum conditions. The push, pull and
jump thesis describe the competing forces that shape cohort-specific retirement trajectories
at the aggregate level.
The life course approach may help explain how institutions influence individual life
courses and shape expectations regarding the ´standard´ or ´right´ retirement age, and
expectations regarding other ways of exit.
The firm structural approach and the theory of incentives and contributions, on the one
side, and the neo-classical labour market theory and the thesis of alternative roles, on the
other side, are competing approaches which help analyse the decisions taken and policies
developed in the ´black box´ of the firm arena. The approach applied by Mares (2001) – a
combination of the varieties of capitalism approach and the varieties of welfare state
regimes approach – describe the conditions under which firms favour certain social policy
arrangements, inter al. with regard to early exit.
With regard to industrial relations, the model of Ebbinghaus (2002) which positions
social partners as an entity mediating between push and pull factors, as well as the power
theory adapted by Nienhüser (1998) to the arena of industrial relations can be applied. On
that basis, I will aim to explain the role social partners play in the process of early retirement
and age management at firm level.
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