Co-determination in the focus of social reseach: 1952-2010. Asynthesis

Co-determination is one of the great socio-political projects of modern-day Germany, and one of the mainstays of its economic and social structure. Since its inception six decades ago, it has been under constant scientific scrutiny. Thus, the scientific study of co-determination does have a long tradition in this country. Scientists have been studying how its role in everyday life has changed - often caused by innovation to the legal environment, but more often than not by technological and organisational upheaval, economic structural change and the globalisation of business. This attempt at a synthesis of such research undertaken so far is based on empirical projects car-ried out in companies and on shopfloors from the beginnings (1952) to the first dec-ade of the new millenium (2010). The stocktaking is based on two sets of data: On the one hand, the overview of empirical co-determination research undertaken between 1952 and 1989. The overview of research undertaken since Germany's reunification (1990-2010), on the other hand, is based on data gathered for a manual on German co-determination, a project supported by the Hans Böckler Foundation. In-sights into the topography of the research landscape presented herein are based on 238 field research projects, most of which (165) were carried out since the 1990s.