ABSTRACT
For the evaluation of the types of capitalism that emerge in East Central Europe, the role of labour relations is crucial. With Kathleen Thelen (2001), we assume that the micro company-level strategies pursued in response to global competition by employers explain the different outcomes of labour relations at macro level. Business leaders in liberal market economies (LME) search for the greatest flexibility and managerial freedom at company level, while in coordinated market economies (CME) employers oriented towards high-quality value-added production still think they have to seek a stable relationship with labour at plant level as well on wider levels. Micro-level strategies in East Central Europe are rarely analysed, there are only a few studies that try to explain industrial relations on the basis of company-level experience (for an overview see Sznajder-Lee and Trappmann 2010). While we cannot compensate for the lack of case studies here, we can provide analysis of what managers say about industrial relations in general and at micro-level, how business leaders perceive their leadership role at company level, clarifying what might influence such positions, like post-socialist legacies, organizational factors such as the sector in question, or more personal characteristics like age, education or income, and how the concrete institutions at company level influence the labour-relations system. While this is a very complex relation, it is quite easy to test whether the existence of labour representation at company level, such as works councils, influence both the attitudes of business leaders and the practices at company level.
