Social Partnership at Work: Workplace Relations in Post-Unification Germany

Social Partnership at Work: Workplace Relations in Post-Unification Germany

The Collapse of Communism and the ensuing process of reforming in central eastern Europe have presented a unique laboratory for researchers interested in social change and institutional building. Eastern Germany provides a particularly interesting case, having experienced rapid and radical political and economic transformations, and representing an historically outstanding experiment of the shifting of an entire social system onto a different society. Social partnership at work provides the first comparative, in depth analysis of workplace relations in east and west Germany. The author examines the success of the institutional transfer of west German Labour organization into east German workplaces to address questions central to the discussion of workplace relations in transitional economies, including Can capitalist labour institutions be imposed on a former communist workforce? What conditions determine the success or failure of these institutions? Can ‘social partnership’ between capital and labour be learned?

Carola M. Frege 

Routledge, London

1999

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English

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