IR 928: EMPLOYERS, MANAGEMENT AND COMPARATIVE INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
TH 5-7:30 Jonathan Zeitlin
6101 Soc Sci 4233A Social Science/5216 Humanities
2-1131/5-2523
Employers and management are increasingly seen as the driving force
behind the development and transformation of national industrial
relations systems. This course will assess such claims through a
theoretical, comparative and historical analysis of labour management
and employer organization in developed capitalist countries.
Particular attention will be paid to the "exceptionalism" of American
employers in relation to their counterparts in Western Europe and
Japan.
Participation is open to graduate students with a basic working
knowledge of comparative industrial relations. Enrollment will be
limited to 25 students, to preserve the seminar character of the
course.
During the semester, students will be asked to make two or three oral
presentations in class, summarizing assigned readings and preparing
themes for discussion. These presentations will then form the basis
of short written papers (8-10 pages), due two weeks after the class
discussion. In addition, students will be asked to write a longer
paper (c. 20 pages), comparing the role of employers and management in
the development and/or transformation of the industrial relations
system of at least two countries. This paper will be due on the last
day of class. The seminar presentations/short papers and the longer
paper will each contribute 50 percent to a student's overall grade.
Active classroom participation may modify a student's overall grade
upwards.
All starred and most unstarred books listed in this syllabus are on
reserve in the Helen C. White College Library. Some of them may also
be on reserve in the Somers Reference Library on the eighth floor of
the Social Science Building. This library also holds copies of the
unpublished manuscripts listed in the syllabus, as well as of those
book chapters and journal articles that it does not otherwise hold.
The most important works for each session are indicated by an asterisk
(*). All students are expected to read these in order to participate
effectively in the seminar discussion. Other works listed are
additional readings for the use of those preparing seminar
presentations or writing course papers.
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Course Texts
Recommended
Tolliday, S. and J. Zeitlin (eds.), 1991: The Power to Manage?
Employers and Industrial Relations in Comparative-Historical
Perspective (New York: Routledge).
Lane, C., 1990: Management and Labor in Europe: The Industrial
Enterprise in Germany, Britain and France (Aldershot: Edward
Elgar).
Sisson, K., 1987: The Management of Collective Bargaining: An
International Comparison (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).
Suggested
Windmuller, J. and A. Gladstone (eds.), 1984: Employers' Associations
and Industrial Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
Kochan, T.A., H.C. Katz and R.B. McKersie, 1986: The Transformation of
American Industrial Relations (New York: Basic Books).
Gordon, A., 1985: The Evolution of Labor Relations in Japan: Heavy
Industry, 1853-1955 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press).
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1. Introduction
*Tolliday, S. and J. Zeitlin, 1991a: "Introduction: Employers and
Industrial Relations Between Theory and History", in Tolliday and
Zeitlin (eds.), The Power to Manage? Employers and Industrial
Relations in Comparative-Historical Perspective (New York:
Routledge), pp. 1-34
*Tolliday, S. and J. Zeitlin, 1991b: "Conclusion: "National Models and
International Variations in Labour Management and Employer
Organization", in ibid., pp. 273-343.
These readings will also be relevant to most of the subsequent
sessions.
2. Theories of Labor Management
*Tomlinson, J.D., 1984: "Economic and Sociological Theories of the
Enterprise and Industrial Democracy", British Journal of Sociology
35: 591-605.
*Gospel, H.F., 1988: "The Management of Labour: Great Britain, the US,
and Japan", Business History 30: 104-115.
*Hyman, R., 1987: "Strategy or Structure? Capital, Labor and Control",
Work, Employment and Society 1: 25-55.
*Thompson, P., 1989: The Nature of Work: An Introduction to Debates on
the Labour Process (2nd edition, London: Macmillan), pp. 38-179,
213-50.
*Putterman, L. (ed.), 1986: The Economic Nature of the Firm: A Reader
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 1-29, 44-60, 92-99,
135-55, 269-328.
3. Theories of Employer Organization
*Olson, M., 1965: The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the
Theory of Groups (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
*Offe, C. and Wiesenthal, H., 1980: "Two Logics of Collective Action",
in M. Zeitlin (ed.), Political Power and Social Theory 1: 67-115;
reprinted in C. Offe, Disorganized Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity,
1985), pp. 170-220.
*Streeck, W. and P.C. Schmitter, 1981: "The Organization of Business
Interests: A Research Design to Study the Associative Action of
Business in the Advanced Industrial Societies of Western Europe",
IIM/LMP Discussion Paper 81-13 (Berlin: WZB).
*Saxenian, A. 1989: "In Search of Power: The Organization of Business
Interests in Silicon Valley and Route 128", Economy & Society 18:
25-70.
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Streeck, W. and P.C. Schmitter, 1985: "Community, Market, State -- and
Associations? The Prospective Contribution of Interest Governance
to Social Order", in Streeck and Schmitter (eds.), Private Interest
Government: Beyond Market and State (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage), pp.
1-29.
*Streeck, W., 1991: "Interest Heterogeneity and Organizing Capacity:
Two Logics of Collective Action?", in: R.M. Czada and A. Windoff-
H!ritier (eds.), Political Choice: Institutions, Rules, and the
Limits of Rationality (Frankfurt/Boulder: Campus/Westview).
4. Comparative Perspectives: Labor Management
*Lane, C., 1990: Management and Labor in Europe: The Industrial
Enterprise in Germany, Britain and France (Aldershot: Edward
Elgar).
*Maurice, M., A. Sorge and M. Warner, "Societal Differences in
Organizing Manufacturing Units: A Comparison of France, West
Germany and Great Britain", Organization Studies 1 (1980) 1: 59-86.
Maurice, M., F. Sellier and J.J. Silvestre, 1986: The Social
Foundations of Industrial Power: A Comparison of France and Germany
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Sorge, A. and M. Warner, 1986: Comparative Factory Organization: An
Anglo-German Comparison of Management and Manpower in Manufacturing
(Aldershot: Gower), pt. II.
Rose, M. 1985: "Universalism, Culturalism and the Aix Group: Promise
and Problems of a Societal Approach to Economic Institutions",
European Sociological Review 1: 65-83.
5. Comparative Perspectives: Employer Organization
*Sisson, K., 1987: The Management of Collective Bargaining: An
International Comparison (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).
*Sisson, K. 1991: "Employers and the Structure of Collective
Bargaining: Distinguishing Cause and Effect", in Tolliday and
Zeitlin, The Power to Manage?, pp. 256-72.
6. The United States: Historical
*Jacoby, S.M. (ed.), 1990: "American Exceptionalism Revisited: The
Importance of Management", in Jacoby, Masters to Managers:
Historical and Comparative Perspectives on American Employers (New
York: Columbia University Press), pp. 173-200.
*Haydu, J., 1988: "Employers, Unions and American Exceptionalism: Pre-
War Open Shops in the Machine Trades in Comparative Perspective",
International Review of Social History 33: 25-41.
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*Harris, H. 1991: "Employers' Collective Action in the Open Shop Era:
The Metal Manufacturers' Association of Philadelphia, c. 1903-
1933", in Tolliday and Zeitlin, The Power to Manage?, pp. 117-46.
plus at least one of the following books:
Nelson, D., 1975: Managers and Workers: Origins of the New Factory
System in the United States, 1880-1920 (Madison: Wisconsin
University Press).
Nelson D. 1980: Frederick W. Taylor and the Rise of Scientific
Management (Madison: Wisconsin University Press).
Jacoby, S.M., 1985: Employing Bureaucracy: Managers, Unions and the
Transformation of Work in American Industry, 1900-1945 (New York:
Columbia University Press).
Harris, H., 1982: The Right to Manage: Industrial Relations Policies
of American Business in the 1940s (Madison: Wisconsin University
Press).
7. The United States: Contemporary
*Kochan, T.A., H.C. Katz and R.B. McKersie, 1986: The Transformation
of American Industrial Relations (New York: Basic Books).
*Derber, M. 1984: "Employers' Associations in the United States", in
J. Windmuller and A. Gladstone (eds.), Employers' Associations and
Industrial Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 80-114.
Slichter, S., J.J. Healy and E.R. Livernash, 1960: The Impact of
Collective Bargaining on Management (Washington D.C.: Brookings
Institution).
Somers, G.G., 1980: Collective Bargaining: Contemporary American
Experience (Madison: IRRA), chs. 1-5, 7.
Lipsky, D.B. and Donn, C.B., 1987: Collective Bargaining in American
Industry (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath), chs. 2-6.
Foulkes, F.K., 1980: Personnel Policies in Large Non-Union Companies
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall).
Kochan, T. (ed.), 1985: Challenges and Choices Facing American Labor
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), pt. II: "Employer Strategies for Union
Avoidance", pp. 75-124.
8. Britain: Historical
*Gospel, H.F. 1992: Markets, Firms and the Management of Labour: The
British Experience in Historical Perspective, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, forthcoming, manuscript on reserve), chs. 1-5,
pp. 1-101.
*Tolliday and Zeitlin, The Power to Manage?, chs. 1-2, pp. 35-80.
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*Tolliday, S., 1986: "Management and Labour in Britain, 1896-1939", in
S. Tolliday and J. Zeitlin (eds.), The Automobile Industry and Its
Workers: Between Fordism and Flexibility (New York: St. Martins
Press), pp. 29-56.
Fitzgerald, R.F. 1987: British Labour Management and Industrial
Welfare, 1846-1939 (London: Croom Helm).
Gospel, H.F. and C.R. Littler (eds.), 1983: Managerial Strategies and
Industrial Relations: A Comparative and Historical Survey (London:
Heinemann, 1983).
Phelps Brown, H., 1983: The Origins of Trade Union Power (Oxford:
Clarendon Press), pp. 98-131.
Harvey, C. and J. Turner (eds.), 1989: Business and Labour in
Twentieth-Century Britain (London: Frank Cass).
9, Britain: Contemporary
*Gospel, Markets, Firms and the Management of Labour, chs. 6-9, pp.
105-89.
*Armstrong, E.G.A., 1984: "Employers' Associations in Great Britain",
in Windmuller and Gladstone, Employers' Associations and Industrial
Relations, pp. 44-78.
*Brown, W. and J. Walsh, 1991: "Pay Determination in Britain in the
1980s: The Anatomy of Decentralization", Oxford Review of Economic
Policy 7, 1: 44-59.
Batstone, E. 1988: The Reform of Workplace Industrial Relations:
Theory, Myth and Evidence, chs. 2, 4-5.
Marginson, P. et al., 1988: Beyond the Workplace: Managing Industrial
Relations in Multi-Establishment Companies (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell).
Tolliday, S. 1991: "Ford and Fordism in Britain: Enterprise Management
and the Control of Labour, 1937-1987", in Tolliday and Zeitlin, The
Power to Manage?, pp. 81-116.
McKinlay, A., and McNulty, D., 1991: "Open Secrets and Hidden Agendas:
Working Time, Flexibility and Industrial Relations in British
Engineering", in P. Blyton and J. Morris (eds.), A Flexible Future?
Prospects for Employment and Organization (New York: Walter de
Gruyter), pp. 295-307.
Hirst, P. and J. Zeitlin, "Flexible Specialisation and the Competitive
Failure of UK Manufacturing", Political Quarterly (Apr.-Jun.): 164-
78.
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10. Germany: Historical
*Geary, D., 1991: "The Industrial Bourgeoisie and Labour Relations in
Germany, 1871-1933", in D. Blackbourn and R.J. Evans (eds.), The
German Bourgeoisie (New York: Routledge).
*Tolliday and Zeitlin, The Power to Manage?, chs. 5-6, pp. 147-203.
*Feldman, G., 1981: "German Interest Group Alliances in War and
Inflation, 1914-23", in S. Berger (ed.), Organizing Interests in
Western Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 159-84.
*Weisbrod, B., 1990: "Entrepreneurial Politics and Industrial
Relations in Mining in the Ruhr Region: From Managerial Absolutism
to Co-determination", in G.D. Feldman and K. Tenfelde (eds.),
Workers, Owners and Politics in Coal Mining (New York: St. Martins
Press), pp. 118-202.
Spencer, E.G. 1984: Management and Labor in Imperial Germany: Ruhr
Industrialists as Employers, 1896-1914 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press).
Feldman, G., 1970: "German Business Between War and Revolution: The
Origins of the Stinnes-Legien Agreement", in G.A. Ritter (ed.),
Enstehung und Wandel der modernen Gesellschaft (Berlin: de
Gruyter), pp. 312-41.
Weisbrod, B., 1979: "Economic Power and Political Stability
Reconsidered: Heavy Industry in Weimar Germany", Social History 4:
241-63.
Pierenkemper, T., 1990: "Trade Associations in Germany in the Late
Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries", in H. Yamazaki and M.
Miyamoto (eds.), Trade Associations in Business History (Tokyo:
Tokyo University Press), pp. 233-68.
11. Germany: Contemporary
*Berghahn, V. R., and D. Karsten, 1988: Industrial Relations in West
Germany (New York: St. Martin's), ch. 1, pp. 9-32.
*Bunn, R. F., 1984: "Employers Associations in the Federal Republic of
Germany", in: J. P. Windmuller and A. Gladstone, eds., Employers
Associations and Industrial Relations: A Comparative Study,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press), 169-201.
*Streeck, W., 1984: "Co-Determination: The Fourth Decade". In: B.
Wilpert and A. Sorge, eds., International Perspectives on
Organizational Democracy, International Yearbook of Organizational
Democracy, vol. II, (Chichester etc.: John Wiley & Sons), pp. 393-
422.
*Streeck, W., 1984: "Neo-Corporatist Industrial Relations and the
Economic Crisis in West Germany", in: J. H. Goldthorpe, ed., Order
and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press),
pp. 291-314
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*Katzenstein, P. 1989: Industry and Politics in West Germany: Toward
the Third Republic (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), chs. 4-8,
pp. 87-248.
Berghahn, V.R., 1986: The Americanization of West German Industry,
1945-1973 (New York: St. Martins Press).
Lawrence, P., 1980: Managers and Management in West Germany (London:
Croom Helm).
Streeck, W., 1983: "Between Pluralism and Corporatism: German Business
Associations and the State", Journal of Public Policy 3: 265-84.
Streeck, W., 1989: "The Territorial Organization of Interests and the
Logics of Associative Action: The Case of Handwerk Organization in
West Germany", in W.D. Coleman and H.J. Jacek (eds.), Regionalism,
Business Interests and Public Policy (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage), pp.
59-94.
12. Sweden: Historical and Contemporary
*Skogh, G., 1984: "Employers Associations in Sweden", in Windmuller
and Gladstone, Employers Associations and Industrial Relations, pp.
149-68
*Swenson, P., 1990: "Bringing Capital Back In, Or Social Democracy
Reconsidered: Employer Power, Cross-Class Alliances, and
Centralization of Industrial Relations in Denmark and Sweden",
unpublished manuscript.
*Jackson, P. and K. Sisson, 1976: "Employers' Confederations in Sweden
and and the U.K. and the Significance of Industrial
Infrastructure", British Journal of Industrial Relations 14: 306-23
*Bengtsson, L. et al., 1984: "The Associative Action of Swedish
Business Interests: The Swedish Employers' Confederation and
CEntralized Collective Bargaining in 1980, 1981 and 1983", IIM/LMP
Discussion Paper 84-24 (Berlin: WZB).
*Ahlen, K., 1989: "Swedish Collective Bargaining Under Pressure:
Inter-Union Rivalry and Incomes Policies", British Journal of
Industrial Relations 27: 330-346.
*Postoff, V., 1991: "The Demise of the Swedish Model and the Rise of
Organized Business as a Major Political Actor", unpublished
manuscript.
De Geer, H., n.d.: "A Successful Strategy of Defence: Employers,
Industrial Relations and Industrial Rationalization in Sweden,
1900-1950", unpublished manuscript.
Auer, P. and C, Riegler, 1990: "Post-Taylorism: The Enterprise as a
Place of Learning Organizational Change. A Comprehensive Study on
Work Organization Changes and Its Context at Volvo", unpublished
manuscript.
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Fulcher, J., 1988: "On the Explanation of Industrial Relations
Diversity: Labour Movements, Employers and the State in Britain and
Sweden", British Journal of Industrial Relations 26: 246-74
Ingham, G., 1974: Strikes and Industrial Conflict: Britain and
Scandinavia (London: Macmillan).
13. Japan: Historical
*Gordon, A., 1985: The Evolution of Labor Relations in Japan: Heavy
Industry, 1853-1955 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press).
*Jacoby, S.M. 1989: "Pacific Ties: Industrial Relations and Employment
Systems in Japan and the US Since 1900", unpublished manuscript.
*Dore, R. 1973: British Factory-Japanese Factory (Berkeley: California
University Press), chs. 14-15, pp. 375-420.
Garon, S., 1988: The State and Labor in Modern Japan, (Palo Alto:
Stanford University Press).
Nakagawa, K. (ed.), 1979: Labor and Management (Tokyo: Tokyo
University Press), pp. 1-44, 127-240.
Yui, T. and Nakagaw, K., (eds.), 1989: Japanese Management in
Historical Perspective (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press).
Yamazaki and Miyamoto, Trade Associations in Business History, pp. 1-
120.
Gordon, A. 1989: "Business and the Corporate State: The Business Lobby
and Bureaucrats on Labor, 1911-41", in W.D. Wray (ed.), Managing
Industrial Enterprise: Case Studies from Japan's Prewar Experience
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), pp. 53-85.
Moore, J. 1983: Japanese Workers and the Struggle for Power, 1945-1947
(Madison: Wisconsin University Press).
Japan: Contemporary
*Koike, K., 1988: Understanding Industrial Relations in Modern Japan
(New York: St. Martin's Press).
*Levine, S. B., 1984: "Employers Associations in Japan", in Windmuller
and A. Gladstone, pp. 318-56
*Kume, I., 1988: "Changing Relations Among the Government, Labor, and
Business in Japan After the Oil Crisis", International
Organization, 42: 659-87.
*Kenny, M. and R. Florida, 1989: "Japan's Role in a Post-Fordist Age",
Futures 21: 136-51.
Dore, British Factory-Japanese Factory, chs. 1-13.
10
Cusumano, M., 1985: The Japanese Automobile Industry: Technology and
Management at Nissan and Toyota (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press).
Clark, R., 1979: The Japanese Company (New Haven: Yale University
Press).
Abbeglen, J.C. and G. Stalk, 1985: Kaisha: The Japanese Company (New
York: Free Press.
Friedman, D., 1988: The Misunderstood Miracle: Industrial Development
and Political Change in Japan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press).
15. Employers, Management and the Future of Industrial Relations
*Sabel, C.F., 1991: "Moebius-Strip Organizations and Open Labor
Markets: Some Consequences of the Reintegration of Conception and
Execution in a Volatile Economy", in J. Coleman and P. Bourdieu
(eds.), Social Theory for a Changing Society (Boulder: Westview
Press).
*Sabel, C.F., 1989: "Flexible Specialization and the Re-emergence of
Regional Economies", in P. Hirst and J. Zeitlin (eds.), Reversing
Industrial Decline? Industrial Structure and Policy in Britain and
Her Competitors (New York: St. Martins Press), pp. 17-70.
*Streeck, W., 1987: "The Uncertainties of Management in the Management
of Uncertainty: Employers, Labour Relations and Interest Adjustment
in the 1980s", Work, Employment and Society 1: 281-308; also in
International Journal of Political Economy 17, 3: 57-87.
*Jones, B., 1991: "Technological Convergence and the Limits to
Managerial Control", in Tolliday and Zeitlin, The Power to Manage?,
pp. 231-55.
*Windolf, P., 1989: "Productivity Coalitions and the Future of
European Corporatism", Industrial Relations 28: 1-20.
*Sisson, K. 1990: "Employers' Organizations and the Industrial
Relations Strategies of Individual Employers", unpublished
manuscript.
IR 928: SEMINAR IN COMPARATIVE INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: