ABSTRACT
This chapter turns the attention to the relationship between the Finnish shipbuilding companies on the one hand and the relationship between the industrial companies and the state on the other hand. The main focus of this chapter is on the state–industry negotiations over the shipyard crisis and its impact on the scale and structure of the Finnish shipbuilding industry. Until the late 1970s, the industrial development had been a shared goal of the government and the companies because the industrial expansion provided employment for the growing urban population. From the year 1977 onwards, the state and shipbuilding industry renegotiated over their relationship in situation in which industrial development meant downscaling and rationalisation rather than the contribution to full employment. Another central theme in this chapter is the dismantling of the consensus culture. The formal and informal cooperative practices between the industrial leaders had coordinated the competition within the Finnish shipbuilding industry, which effectively froze the market shares of the companies for over 20 years. In the 1980s, the shipbuilding companies tried to find new ways to coordinate the shipbuilding competition through mergers and acquisitions in a situation in which the overall volume of ship orders decreased. During the decade from 1982 to 1992, the Finnish shipbuilding capacity decreased to half and, half of the major shipyards were sold abroad.
