Roderick Martin

Institutional Theory and Economic Transformation: Enterprise Employment Relations in Bulgaria

This article employs institutional theory to analyse the remodelling of employment relations after the transformation from socialism to a market-based economy. Such transformation is subject to constraints deriving from institutional legacies which include both structures and ideational forces, and which create path dependence. We report empirical research on employment relations within Bulgarian enterprises, and show how path dependency has interacted with intentional design. We identify the structural and cultural residues that mould post-socialist employment relations. The result is a system of industrial relations that combines conscious redesign along a continental European model of corporatist interest representation and collective bargaining with institutional residues from socialism which have themselves mutated with the collapse of traditional institutional structures after the revolution.

Employment Relations in Central and Eastern Europe in 2001: An Emerging Capitalist Periphery

No abstract available.

Union Autonomy, a Terminal Case in the UK? A Comparison with the Approach in Other European Countries and the USA

Since 1979, the Conservative government in the UK has introduced wide-ranging and detailed regulations for the conduct of union internal affairs; a number of other Western industrialized countries have not done so (or have not done so to the same extent) but have continued their tradition of relying on unions themselves to establish democratic procedures. Alternative views of the role of the state in industrial relations underlie these differences. A second, linked article, appearing in Employee Relations (Vol. 15 No. 4), examines state approaches to union autonomy in the context of attitudes towards other controls on union activities and attempts to explain the successive shifts in British policy in the UK since the 1960s.

Technological Change in the National Press

Two sets of factors stimulated widespread interest in new technology in the national newspaper industry in 1975: the worsening economic situation of the press, discussed fully in the Interim Report of the Royal Commission on the Press, published in March 1976, and the expanding use of computerised photo‐composition systems abroad, especially in the United States. The overall economic situation of national newspapers, both quality and popular, in 1975 was weak, and was expected to worsen; between 1970 and 1975 the quality dailies made a total profit of £380,000 on an annual turnover of £50 millions, the heaviest losses occurring in 1975. At the same time, increasing awareness of American experience suggested that the use of computerised photo‐composition techniques could lead to major savings in production costs.