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The Uncertainties of Management in the Management of Uncertainty: Employers, Labor Relations and Industrial Adjustment in the 1980s

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  • Wolfgang Streeck

    (IIMV Platz der Luftbrücke 1808 BERLIN 62)

Abstract

In the course of economic crisis, the initiative in industrial relations shifts to employers. This paper does not present employers' recent industrial relations initiatives in detail, but rather tries to reconstruct the general strategic problem to which they are responding. This problem is to find ways of managing an unprecedented degree of economic uncertainty deriving from a need for continuous rapid adjustment to a market environment that seems to have become permanently more turbulent than in the past. This requires an increasingly close (re-)integration of industrial relations and industrial strategy in the context of a comprehensive manufacturing policy. Institutional barriers which insulate industrial relations from concerns for, and changes in, economic performance need to be dismantled, and `flexibility' is a key concept. However, the management of uncertainty remains incomplete and beset with contradictions due to profound uncertainties of management regarding the structure and function of a flexible industrial relations system. These uncertainties are linked to wider problems of industrial strategy whose resolution partly depends on the strategic decisions of other actors, in particular trade unions.

Suggested Citation

  • Wolfgang Streeck, 1987. "The Uncertainties of Management in the Management of Uncertainty: Employers, Labor Relations and Industrial Adjustment in the 1980s," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 1(3), pages 281-308, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:1:y:1987:i:3:p:281-308
    DOI: 10.1177/0950017087001003002
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Marsden, David, 1981. "Collective bargaining and positive adjustment policies," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 20658, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
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    Cited by:

    1. Hollingsworth, J. Rogers, 1990. "The Governance of American Manufacturing Sectors: The Logic of Coordination and Control," MPIfG Discussion Paper 90/4, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    2. Jill RUBERY & Damian GRIMSHAW, 2001. "ICTs and employment: The problem of job quality," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 140(2), pages 165-192, June.
    3. Ashwin, Sarah & Oka, Chikako & Schüßler, Elke & Alexander, Rachel & Lohmeyer, Nora, 2020. "Spillover effects across transnational industrial relations agreements: the potential and limits of collective action in global supply chains," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 100997, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Ruth V. Aguilera & Igor Filatotchev & Howard Gospel & Gregory Jackson, 2008. "An Organizational Approach to Comparative Corporate Governance: Costs, Contingencies, and Complementarities," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 19(3), pages 475-492, June.
    5. A. Arrighetti & E. Bartoloni & F. Landini & C. Pollio, 2019. "Exuberant proclivity towards non-standard employment: evidence from linked employer-employee data," Economics Department Working Papers 2019-EP02, Department of Economics, Parma University (Italy).

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