Institutions Are What Actors Make of Them — The Changing Construction of Firm‐Level Employment Relations in Spain

Abstract

This article analyses the variation and change in firm‐level employment relations in Spain between the transition to democracy and the global financial crisis. Using three auto companies as case studies, I address a crucial puzzle in the institutional literature on comparative employment relations: How do employment relations change and vary, even when national employment relations institutions do not? This article argues that differences in actor ideologies shape the construction of national institutions at the firm level, which explains change and variation of employment relations over time and across cases. The study identifies four drivers of ideological change — generational change, leadership change, identity work and diffusion — that impact the variation and change in employment relations at the firm level.

The Role of Ideas in Understanding Industrial Relations Policy Change in Liberal Market Economies

“…Some scholars have focused on trade unions and how they might use ideas to shape interests and collective identities as part of battles of competing ideas (Lévesque and Murray ; McLaughlin and Bridgman ). Hauptmeier () shows how workplace actors’ behavior is not determined mechanically by national institutions; instead, actors interpret and enact how institutions operate, and their different ideas can lead to differing interpretations and enactments. Hauptmeier and Heery () provide a comprehensive review of the types of ideas; some of the mechanisms for creating, maintaining, and changing ideas; and the contextual and resource factors that might make some ideas more effective than others.…”

Ideas at work

“…Put differently, 'As a new generation enters the stream of history, the lives of its members are marked by the imprint of social change and in turn leave their own imprint' (Riley 1978). The mechanism of generational change has been used to explain changes in employment relations in Spain (Hauptmeier 2012). The transition from a generation of union and management formed through their experiences during the Franco dictatorship to one whose experiences has been within a liberal democratic regime transformed the ideologies of management and labour unions with implications for the substance and outcomes of employment relations.…”

Explaining variation in the social performance of lean production: a comparative case study of the role played by workplace unions' framing of the system and institutions

“…The present article aims to pursue this goal by additionally underlining the recursive interplay between workplace union identity and institutional and organisational resources. Certainly, available resources are relevant in constraining or supporting union choices, but they also give labour organisations (and actors in general) leeway to strategically decide whether and how they should be activated (Hauptmeier, ; Murray et al ., ).…”

“…At the same time, it is important to recognise that unions' framing of lean production does not represent the only driver of the different social performances of lean production. As highlighted by Hauptmeier (), management ideologies produce specific framings of situations that contribute to substantiate the construction of institutions at the firm level. It follows that management's framing of lean production represents another important driver of social performance.…”