ABSTRACT
This book has shown that employer labour policies, both individual and collective, display considerable variation across space and time. But how far do such variations polarize around distinctive national models? And if, as we argued in the Introduction, the objective constraints of markets and technology are insufficient to impose uniform labour strategies on employers, what of other forces operating ‘behind the backs’ of the actors themselves-notably national culture? Are the apparently subjective choices of employers-along with those of other social actors-in fact determined at a deeper level by the values, norms and practices of the culture into which they have been socialized?1 This concluding chapter begins by considering the relationship between culture, institutions and strategies in defining national models, before building on the findings of the preceding chapters to construct a systematic comparative analysis of international variations in labour management within the enterprise, and in employer organization and collective action.
