Xavier Coller

Managing Flexibility in the Food Industry: A Cross-National Comparative Case Study in European Multinational Companies

Multinational companies are often seen as (potential) agencies for disseminating similar employment practices across countries and hence encouraging industrial relations convergence. The relationship between centre and periphery helps determine the extent to which they perform this role. This article reports findings from research in the Spanish and British subsidiaries of a multinational, which indicate that, despite the considerable formal autonomy of local management, there were many indirect methods by which the head office could ensure conformity with common industrial relations policies.

Transnational Management Influence over Changing Employment Practice: A Case from the Food Industry

The means by which multinational companies (MNCs) develop and diffuse transnational industrial relations practices are the focus of this article. It elaborates different channels through which international management exercises influence over local practice in operations across different countries. Drawing on survey findings, it identifies the kinds of MNC in which the exercise of such transnational influence is most prevalent. The processes involved are investigated through an in-depth study of a European food MNC. This highlights the importance of ‘unobtrusive’ channels of transnational influence operating within a structure which promotes both cooperation and competition between local units.

National Industrial Relations Systems and Cross-Border Restructuring: Evidence From a Merger in the Pharmaceuticals Sector

This article examines the restructuring process following a cross-border merger in the pharmaceuticals sector. We show how national industrial relations systems account for some aspects of cross-national differences in the process and outcomes of restructuring. However, we also argue that institutionalist approaches to comparative analysis must be complemented by a focus on the material interests of organizational actors and the resources that they can deploy.

Las bases sociales de la identidad dual: el caso valenciano

Las teorias sobre nacionalismo e identidades colectivas, especialmente la escuela neoinstitucionalista, preven la emergencia y consolidacion de las identidades regionales como consecuencia de la federalizacion de los estados. Es mas probable que este fenomeno ocurra cuando las condiciones politicas, culturales y/o economicas promueven un cierto sentimiento de diferenciacion. El caso valenciano se desvia de esta presuncion. En lugar de reforzarse la identidad periferica (regional o nacional), se consolida una identidad multiple en la que se combinan los referentes colectivos valencianos y espanoles. Este trabajo examina las bases sociales de esta identidad dual y desarrolla un modelo explicativo de este fenomeno que merece una atencion mayor como resultado del proceso de descentralizacion de los estados.

Redes, cultura e identidad en las organizaciones

La interaccion entre cultura y estructura informal de la organizacion tiene efectos diversos en la vida diaria de las instituciones. Algunos de ellos son el desarrollo de una cierta identidad organizativa y la aparicion de relaciones de poder informal. Este articulo avanza varias lineas de investigacion sobre estos dos aspectos aprovechando algunas de las aportaciones del analisis de redes. Los autores aventuran algunas hipotesis de trabajo que pueden ayudar a orientar investigaciones empiricas en el futuro.

The Effects of the Crisis: Why Southern Europe?

The late 2000s economic crisis has transformed Europe. Scholars and politicians concur with the longstanding economic, political, and social consequences of this crisis. The financial meltdown shrunk traditionally large economies and left a few of them at the verge of bankruptcy. The South of Europe, in particular, is one of the regions in the world where the consequences of the crisis have become most salient. Governmental efforts to face the crisis have generated deep institutional changes and historical turning points for the welfare state, democratic representation, labor relations, and social protests. The economic crisis has shifted the structure of the political field, allowing the rise of new political actors and novel alignments on both new and old political issues. In the midst of these transformations, we have attempted to compile a collection of scholarly analyses that seek to examine the most important institutional and social shifts taking place today in Southern Europe. Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain have experienced two parallel crises of different types—an economic crisis and a political one. These two crises cannot be examined in isolation: the institutional response to face the former has provoked the latter. These economic and political crises are both national and transnational. Since 2009, the European Union has encouraged Southern European nations to implement a political agenda of austerity, in exchange for financial assistance. These policies have reduced the state’s participation in the economy and, in turn, increased unemployment rates. Moreover, a monetary policy aimed at maintaining a high euro–U.S. dollar parity has been especially detrimental to the primary and secondary sectors of Southern Europe. Low economic activity, high unemployment, low consumption, and the declining role of the state have generated a new economic scenario with unpredictable consequences. Increasing inequality, rising social unrest, weakening public institutions, and growing political disaffection question the extent to which Southern European democracies can

Selecting Candidates in Multilevel Democracies

Parties around the world have introduced more participatory ways of selecting candidates for public office in recent decades (Hopkin, 2001). The improvement on the electoral performance (Carey & Polga-Hecimovich, 2006), the search for—or enhancement of—internal democratization (Dalton, Farrell, & McAllister, 2011; De Winter, 1988; Rahat & Hazan, 2001), as well as external pressures—organized civil society, competition of new parties—to open the party organization has motivated the change toward more inclusive selection processes. As previous works have shown, the level of inclusiveness of candidate selection is fundamental in any representative democracy as it influences the quality of representation (Katz, 2001; Norris & Lovenduski, 1995), party discipline or cohesion within parties (Bowler, Farrell, & Katz, 1999; Carey, 2007; Cordero & Coller, 2015; Gallagher & Marsh, 1988), internal distribution of power (Bille, 2001; Gallagher, Laver, & Mari, 2001; Hopkin, 2001; Michels, 1915), the voting behavior of selectors (Cross & Blais, 2012), and affects the stability of governments and institutions (Gallagher et al., 2001; Morlino, 1995; Rahat & Hazan, 2010). The selection of candidates is in most cases a nonpublic and largely unknown political process. Nonetheless, it is one of the most relevant elements affecting the quality of democracies since criteria and procedures to select candidates lead to electoral lists from which citizens select their representatives. Who decides who will be on the electoral list? What criteria are mobilized to select the candidates and under what institutional constraints? How are they selected, what are the procedures conditioning the selection process? To answer these questions, the most common strategy among

Candidate Selection in a Multilevel State The Case of Spain

The intraparty mechanisms for Members of Parliament (MPs) selection has been only partially analyzed by the literature. Most works focus on parties’ written rules regarding the selection of candidates for the national chamber(s). However, party statutes hide other informal procedures. In this article, we analyze how candidate selection is implemented in parties using survey data for a representative sample of 580 MPs, completed with 58 in-depth interviews of MPs and gatekeepers. With these data, we analyze how the selection of candidates is implemented in a multilevel democracy such as Spain.

Recruitment and Selection

This chapter focuses on a hardly known matter: how individuals are chosen for the electoral list. The analysis relies on the causation funnel model by Norris (1997) and the inclusiveness and centralization dimensions by Rahart and Hazan (2001) to conclude that the MPs candidates are selected in a centralized and exclusive way; that is to say, far away from the rank-and-file affiliates, the activist and supporters at the local level. Loyalty, party involvement and expertise are the main reasons underlying candidate selection for the electoral lists whilst there are significant differences among parties.

‘Safe enclaves’? American multinationals and Spanish trade unionism

By examining two case studies in Spains automobile industry, this article analyzes the part played by the multinational corporation (MNC) in the historical transformation of Spanish trade unionism at shop-floor level. The literature on organizational change, often aimed at explaining the ability of MNCs to diffuse human resource policies and practices across borders, is used to explore MNCs’ ability to introduce organizational changes into the specific local conditions they are forced to deal with. Of the three possible types of organizational change examined (‘continuity and institutional inertia’, ‘discontinuous and revolutionary change’, and ‘hybridization’), the authors find there is a strong evidential tendency towards hybridization. The MNCs under scrutiny were able to transform some aspects of the work of trade unions at the workplace level (wages, promotion, selection), but found they had to adapt their management style to the Francoist states labour legislation – namely, concerning professional classification and functional mobility. The authors also contend that it was the role of these companies as MNCs, not their country of origin, which opened the way to the transformation of trade union organization and labour relations at the local level in Spain, since such a transformation accelerated once French and Italian multinationals took over each one of the MNCs under examination.