ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an original perspective for the analysis of industrial relations, since it takes up the concept of framing, which is central to research on social movements, and makes it applicable to the power resource approach. The concept is relevant for the analysis of collective actors because it has a cognitive and a strategic dimension. Any strategic choice ultimately depends on the cognitive aspect, that is, how a situation is interpreted by the actors. The strategic aspect of framing concerns the policy implications that collective actors draw from this interpretation. In Germany at the beginning of the crisis still the first grand coalition was in office. The different positions of the Greek and German economies after the 2008 crisis were not just the result of discursive policies but were based on economic and structural conditions. The framing concept with its constructivist perspective is only suitable if it is consistently combined with a materialistic perspective and a concrete policy analysis.
