Social Partnership at Work

The collapse of communism and the ensuing process of reform in Central Eastern Europe have presented a unique laboratory for researchers interested in social change and institutional building. East Germany provides a particularly interesting case, having experienced rapid and radical political and economic transformation, and representing an historically outstanding experiment of the shifting of an entire social system onto a different society. Social Partnership at Work provides the first comparative, in-depth analysis of workplace relations in East and West Germany. The author examines the success of the institutional transfer of West German labour organizations into East German workplaces, in an effort to address questions central to the discussion of workplace relations in transitional economies, including: * can capitalist labour institutions be imposed on a former communist workforce? * what conditions determine the success or failure of these institutions?* can social partnership between capital and labour be learned? This book will be of great interest to students and academics in the areas of industrial relations, industrial sociology and political science.