The regulation of the labour market by industrial-relations institutions has been an important theme in sociology, political science, economics, and jurisprudence. What has particularly attracted attention from a comparative perspective is the astonishing variety of national labour-relations institutions. This variety, when confronted with persistent economic internationalisation raises two main questions. First, does internationalisation impose pressures for change and, more specifically, for convergence on institutions? If such pressures are at work, is there a superior model the national systems are converging on? Second, under economic internationalisation, cross-national differences in national arrangements may have an increasing impact on national economic performance. Hence the question is whether national labour-relations systems perform differently, and to what extent their performance has changed over time due to shifting circumstances. This book investigates these questions on the basis of a cross-national comparison, including comparable data from twenty OECD countries.

Based on data for 20 OECD countries, this paper analyses the effect of bargaining centralization on performance and control over the employment relationship. Rejecting both the corporatist thesis and the hump-shape thesis, the paper finds that performance either increases or decreases with centralization, depending on the ability of the higher level to bind lower levels. There is a clear effect on control in that bargaining coverage significantly declines with decentralization. Employers can therefore expect to extend management prerogatives, rather than improve performance, when enforcing decentralization. Hence the literature on bargaining structures when focusing on performance has lost sight of their contested nature. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2003.

Research on the performance effects of bargaining remains inconclusive. One reason for this is neglect of heterogeneity of the bargainers, namely differences in exposure to world markets and their implications for international competitiveness. Since the effects of bargaining on competitiveness depend on coping with productivity differentials between the exposed and sheltered sector, we discuss how distinct bargaining structures interact with these differentials. Exposed-sector pattern setting is predicted to be the only bargaining structure that is sensitive to productivity differentials. The findings from time series cross-sectional analysis corroborate the expected impact on labour costs and the current balance, whereas no employment effects are discernible.

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Pattern bargaining stands out as both an under-researched and controversial subject. This article is an analytical and empirical contribution to this debate. Theoretically, it provides a conceptual framework, which enables analysis to systematically differentiate between distinct forms of pattern bargaining in terms of scope, agency, development and function, which arise from differing contexts in terms of interest configuration, power relations and economic conditions. This framework is used to develop testable hypotheses on pattern bargaining as a mechanism of inter-industry bargaining co-ordination. The empirical part of the article examines these hypotheses for collective bargaining from 1969 to 2004 in Austria, which is commonly seen as a paradigm case of pattern bargaining. The article concludes by highlighting the broader implications its findings have from a cross-nationally comparative perspective. Copyright (c) Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2007.

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Abstract.  Given notable fluctuations in the relevance of corporatist practices over time, did profound transformations in the profile of corporatism accompany these fluctuations? Based on data from twenty OECD countries, this article examines whether and how corporatist wage regulation changed its profile in structures, policies and performance from 1970 to 1996. The empirical evidence obtained from this analysis runs counter to the orthodox view of superior persistence and performance of classical (i.e., encompassing and centralized) structures of corporatism. Non‐classical (‘lean’) structures have gained in importance and performed no worse than their classical counterparts. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the findings for corporatist theory.