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Article
Publication date: 21 May 2018

Karina Becker, Klaus Dörre and Yalcin Kutlu

The thesis of our paper is that the industrial dispute articulates a counter-movement against the progressive capitalist Landnahme of care work. What is ostensibly a standard wage…

203

Abstract

Purpose

The thesis of our paper is that the industrial dispute articulates a counter-movement against the progressive capitalist Landnahme of care work. What is ostensibly a standard wage conflict proves, on closer scrutiny, to be a dispute that contains a transformative social dynamic. It cannot be conceived either as a traditional class struggle or as a movement against the market’s unreasonable demands. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors draw on a qualitative survey in the social and childcare services (expert interviews, groups discussions, expert hearings) and two partial-studies on the renewal of trade unions in East and West Germany (54 expert and 46 employee interviews).

Findings

Professional pride along with confidence in their own professional skills collides with the market- and competition-driven devaluation of the work of entire groups of employees. Used correctly, a putative professional consciousness can transform into a source of resilience, protest and collective engagement, which the authors interpret as counter-Landnahme. A consciousness rooted in professionality develops into a subjective power resource, the activation of which simultaneously strengthens trade unions’ power to effectuate change.

Originality/value

In the case of the childcare workers, this movement is rooted in a newly awakened consciousness as skilled labourers. What at first appears as a wage conflict is in fact, upon closer inspection, a conflict loaded with transformative potential. After all, any greater social recognition of this occupational group will naturally, at least by tendency, prompt a discussion concerning the modes of financing public reproductive activities.

Details

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, vol. 37 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2040-7149

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Article
Publication date: 16 May 2018

Walther Müller-Jentsch

The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct the development of industrial relations (IR) in Germany since the end of the Second World War and discusses the current challenges…

1312

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to reconstruct the development of industrial relations (IR) in Germany since the end of the Second World War and discusses the current challenges posed by economic globalisation und European integration.

Design/methodology/approach

Combining a political economy, identifying Germany as a coordinated market economy (social market economy), and actor-centred historical institutionalism approach, outlining the formation and strategies of the main social actors within a particular institutional setting, the paper draws on the broad range of research on IR in Germany and its theoretical debates, including own research in the field.

Findings

The legacy of the key institutional settings in the post-war era – primarily the social market economy, co-determination at supervisory boards, works councils and sector-based non-ideological unions with their analogously organised employer counterparts, as well as the dual system of interest representation – has shaped the German IR and still underlie the bargaining processes and joint learning processes although trade unions and employers’ associations have been weakened because of loss of membership. In consequence the coverage scope of collective agreements is now somewhat reduced. Despite being declared dead many times, the “German model” of a “conflictual partnership” of capital and labour has survived many turbulent changes affecting it to the core.

Originality/value

The paper presents an original, theoretical informed reconstruction of the German IR and allows an understanding of the current institutional changes and challenges in the light of historical legacies. Additionally the theoretical debates on path dependence and learning processes of collectivities are enriched through its application to the German case.

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Article
Publication date: 21 May 2018

Brigitte Aulenbacher and Birgit Riegraf

742

Abstract

Details

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, vol. 37 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2040-7149

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Article
Publication date: 2 July 2021

Hugo Letiche

Gunther Anders in the 20th century and Hartmut Rosa in the 21st have argued that the technics of organization – that is, its physical and social technologies, have from…

307

Abstract

Purpose

Gunther Anders in the 20th century and Hartmut Rosa in the 21st have argued that the technics of organization – that is, its physical and social technologies, have from acceleration become so uncontrollable and unpredictable that circumstances actually outstrip awareness to the degree that intentional “organizing” is more a fable than a reality, as stated in the quote from Rosa that forms the title of this article.

Design/methodology/approach

In this article, two critical theorists are examined who have fundamentally rejected the “control” thesis that dominates organization theory. It is a thesis that assumes that organizational change ought to be goal-directed, leadership driven and make use of soft and hard technologies to achieve defined objectives.

Findings

The prevailing “idea” of organizing has become illusionary. The technics of accelerationism have overpowered it. Not “organizing” but “ethic-sizing” is what remains as the: “What is to be done.”

Originality/value

The tradition of Gunther Anders and Hartmut Rosa (second and third generation Frankfurter School) and the implications of their work for our assumptions about the relations between technology, control and organization is for a first time evidenced in this article.

Details

Journal of Organizational Change Management, vol. 34 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0953-4814

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