Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
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LYUDMYLA REFERENCES LITERATUR VOLYNETS<br />
of actors’ interest and cultural ideas being the<br />
building blocks of institutions. IR arenas are<br />
addressed as “a complex institutional system<br />
that determines which interests and actors are<br />
to be admitted … [and which] set boundaries<br />
for the courses of action open to the actors…”<br />
(Müller-Jentsch 1996: 31). Such an approach<br />
allows one to address the linkages between the<br />
progress of the institutionalization and actors’<br />
formation, on the one hand, and the tensions<br />
between the macro-level (system) and microlevel<br />
(actors) institutionalization (Wollmann<br />
1997) on the other. It further advances the<br />
understanding of the IR segmentation.<br />
Advancing such a perspective pre-supposes the<br />
recognition of actors’ strategic choices as well<br />
as the scope of changes they go through. Firstly,<br />
those authors highlighting the role of union<br />
discretion over IR (Trif und Koch 2005a,b,<br />
Huzzard, Gregory und Scott 2005, Hanke und<br />
Mense-Petermann 2001) show that even under<br />
the present constraints, unions still have been<br />
able to impose strategic choices on employers.<br />
In spite of union weaknesses, they could be<br />
effective in some IR areas. For example, on<br />
the national level Avgadic (2003) develops an<br />
understanding of union effectiveness that has<br />
resulted from the pre-history of state-unions<br />
interactions and their learning processes. A<br />
similar, process oriented concept was developed<br />
by Frege (2002) pointing that a process of unionmanagement<br />
relationships is determinant<br />
for union effectiveness. It facilitates longterm<br />
union transformation and goes back to<br />
unions’, members’ and managers’ attitudes and<br />
perceptions. Thus, sorting out unions’ choices<br />
in the processes of their relationships with<br />
the management is helpful in tracing unions’<br />
formative processes and the linkages between<br />
the institutional and behavioral aspects of IR<br />
institutionalization.<br />
Secondly, union formative processes go beyond<br />
a solely organizational formation of unions to<br />
their roles and functions. Structural reforms<br />
alone would not be enough to re-constitute<br />
unions’ roles as workers’ representatives 5 . In<br />
this dilemma, unions’ choices are more embracing.<br />
Unions can either resist or collaborate<br />
(subordinate) with employers and the state<br />
(Clarke 2005). Which way unions follow<br />
depends on how they address changes in the<br />
course of their formative processes, meaning<br />
in relation to union identity, agenda, structure,<br />
relationships with members, employers, and<br />
conflict articulation. Such a scope of necessary<br />
changes allows one to capture them as formative<br />
processes. Depending on the progress of<br />
union formative processes, the latter is a part<br />
of the explanation of a variety of enterprisebased<br />
IR ranging from subordination through<br />
union-management cooperation against state<br />
to cases of resistance and contestation. The<br />
formative processes of unions are directly<br />
affected by union embeddedness into interactions<br />
with employers and, in broader terms, by<br />
transformation.<br />
THE INTERACTIONS OF MANAGERS AND UNIONS<br />
ACROSS FSU<br />
Transformation exposes IR actors<br />
to significant challenges originating Seite page 219<br />
from the interplay of the socialist<br />
past and present choices, external<br />
and endogenous factors, as well as those that<br />
come from the interplay between the formal<br />
dimension of policy-making and its informal