The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. AbstractAgainst the background that corporatism is on the decline in recent decades, one could expect that the representativeness of employer and business associations is also declining. In this article it is argued and shown that, contrary to this expectation, this decline is not observable for employers and business associations. So the question arises as to whether employer and business associations are simply relics of a different era with no longer any purpose. Using a cross-national approach it is shown that by adapting their organizational structure as well as their activities to the changing needs of business, employers and business organizations are as 'strong' and active nowadays as ever.

Pension fund investments have a substantial influence on sustainability. We analyze preferences for sustainable investment among a representative cross-section of 2486 pension fund participants in the Netherlands, through a questionnaire survey fielded in the LISS panel. In contrast to standard investment theory, we find that sustainable investments are commonly favored, even if they harm financial interests. To explain variation among participants' preferences for sustainable investments, we test socio-demographic factors suggested by dominant neoclassical investment and behavioral finance theories. Moreover, we add to the existing literature by developing an alternative cultural-theoretical explanation that stresses the role of value orientations. We estimate linear and generalized ordered logit regression models, and find little support for neoclassical and behavioral finance theories, but substantial support for the importance of value orientations. Given established patterns of value-change, this finding suggests that a further increase in the demand for sustainable investments across developed economies is a likely scenario.

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Although studies have signaled a gap in trade union representation between workers with secure employment (i.e., 'insiders') and those without (i.e., 'outsiders'), this gap has rarely been empirically analyzed at the micro-level. With recent micro-level data from the Netherlands, this study addresses two questions. First, to what extent do insiders and outsiders, measured through individuals' employment status and self-perceived social risk, differ in their willingness/probability to join trade unions? Second, to what extent can these differences in trade union membership be explained as resulting from perceptions of interest representation and/or workplace social cohesion? The results suggests a clear insider-outsider gap in trade union membership related to employment status, but not to social risk. Furthermore, this gap can be explained by differences in perceptions of representation, but not workplace social cohesion.

Using unique survey data on Dutch collective agreement negotiators, the authors model how information about other collective bargaining events influences the probability of negotiators encountering bargaining impasses or industrial action during collective bargaining. Competing hypotheses about this influence, derived from economic, social psychological and sociological approaches, are tested. The findings indicate that information about bargaining outcomes elsewhere has no significant effect on the occurrence of conflict. However, if the information content of spillover refers to the conflict potential in other bargaining events and the sources of information are proximate, the probability of conflict is increased. This suggests that sociological mechanisms offer a compelling alternative to those invoked in economics for explaining the relationship between spillover and conflict.