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Dr Boyd Black
School of Management and Economics
Queen’s University of Belfast
Belfast BT7 1NN
b.black@qub.ac.uk
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Abstact
This paper develops a cultural model of comparative industrial relations theory that will explain the cross-national pattern of industrial relations institutions and any change in this over time. A critical review of the existing body of theory establishes that national culture is currently given little weight as an explanatory variable. A cultural model is developed, based on a definition and specification of culture developed by Hofstede. Industrial relations variables are regressed on Hofstede’s cultural indices. National culture is found to be significantly associated with all the dimensions of industrial relations. A related cultural model is developed to explain longitudinal change in industrial relations institutions and outcomes.
NATIONAL CULTURE AND COMPARATIVE INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS THEORY
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Introduction:
The central challenge facing comparative industrial relations theory and one whichthis paper attempts to address, is to explain the cross-national variety of industrialrelations institutions and to explain why this pattern has changed, insomuch as it has
changed, over time.
The salient characteristics of different industrial relations systems are by now wellestablished. However, there is less agreement about recent developments ininternational employment relations and over the extent to which there has been
relative stability in industrial relations systems over time.
Clarke, Bamber and Lansbury (1998), in reviewing the evolution of post-waremployment relations between 1960 and the late 1990s across ten countries,conclude that between 1960 and 1980 there were few significant structural changesto note. Between 1980 and the late 1990s, they remark on the legal reforms inBritain; the Auroux reforms in France; decentralisation in Sweden and Australia; andchanges in Italy and Korea. Otherwise, they conclude ‘systematic changes were not
great’, though there were widespread changes in the balance between employersand unions within the systems, reflecting the changed economic environment.Likewise, Wallerstein, Golden and Lange (1997) and Golden, Wallerstein and Lange(1999) find stability and resilience in industrial relations institutions and no evidenceof a general union decline or decentralisation in bargaining.
4Ferner and Hyman (1992; 1998) paint a similar picture of essential continuity innational industrial relations systems throughout Europe in the face of pressures forconvergence. While there had been deregulation in countries such as Britain, thishad not occurred in Germany and Denmark, while in some countries there had been
re-regulation. Crouch (1993) likewise emphasises the ‘power of continuity’ and
searches hard to find changes of style and structure, while Traxler et al (2001) find
the prevalence of the ‘path dependency’ of institutions rather than convergenceresulting from internationalised market pressures (p. 289).
A different view has been presented by Katz (1993) who argues that bargainingstructure is becoming more decentralised in Sweden, Australia, the former WestGermany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States. Flanagan (1999), usingdata on collective bargaining structure from 1980-1994, also suggests there wasbargaining decentralisation in many countries, as 本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。