The Political Economy of Occupational Family Policies: Comparing Workplaces in Britain and Germany
| Date | 01 December 2009 |
| Author | Martin Seeleib‐Kaiser,Timo Fleckenstein |
| Published date | 01 December 2009 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2009.00741.x |
The Political Economy of Occupational
Family Policies: Comparing Workplaces
in Britain and Germanybjir_741741..764
Martin Seeleib-Kaiser and Timo Fleckenstein
Abstract
With a shift in the political debate to more market-driven social policy
approaches during the past decade, politicians in a number of European coun-
tries have argued that employers should take on greater responsibilities in the
provision of social policy. But why should employers get involved? After review-
ing the relevant literature on firm-level social policy, we analyse the conditions
and causal pathways that lead to their provision. Our findings show that (i) the
skill structure and level of the workforce are important conditions for firm-level
engagement; (ii) employers have usually been the ‘protagonists’; (iii) the role
of unions has been more limited — in Germany they can largely be character-
ized as ‘consenters’, whereas in Britain, their impact is negligible; (iv) in
accordance with the specific systems of industrial relations, the design in
Germany very much follows the concept of social partnership; in Britain the
design is usually based on unilateral management decisions; and (v) based on
these conditions and causal pathways, ‘enclave social policy’ is the likely result
of the expansionary policy development, although in Germany, these policies
have the potential of becoming an element of ‘industrial citizenship’.
1. Introduction
Recent institutional welfare state analyses (cf. Martin 2000; Swenson 2002)
and the ‘Varieties of Capitalism’ (VoC) literature (Estévez-Abe et al. 2001;
Hall and Soskice 2001) have contributed significantly to a better understand-
ing of employers’ preferences towards social policies. Employers are no longer
primarily seen as opponents of welfare states and social policy arrangements,
but under specific conditions as important actors contributing to their stabil-
ity. Hence, social policy should not only be considered as politics against
Martin Seeleib-Kaiser is at the University of Oxford. Timo Fleckenstein is at the London School
of Economics and Political Science.
British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8543.2009.00741.x
47:4 December 2009 0007–1080 pp. 741–764
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2009. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
markets (Esping-Andersen 1985) but also potentially as politics for markets
(Iversen 2005). This debate implicitly connects to older arguments made
about the ‘economic benefits of social policies’ (cf. Briefs 1930) and their
potential benefits at the company level (cf. Vobruba 1991: 51–8). Much of this
research was limited to state provision and did not address private or extra-
statutory social policies and the reasons for employers to get involved (but see
Martin 2000). Yet in many advanced European economies, private social
policies have been expanding during the past decade and now constitute an
important element of the various welfare systems (cf. Peters 2005; Seeleib-
Kaiser 2008). Thus, from this perspective, it seems appropriate to investigate
the conditions and causal pathways leading to the institutionalization of
firm-level social policy provision in greater detail.
Within the wider debate of corporate social responsibility (CSR) (Vogel
2005), the role of enterprises as agents of social policy has also been high-
lighted, although much of this literature has not been very systematic with
regard to identifying the conditions and causal pathways. According to the
economist Milton Friedman, ‘there is one and only one social responsibility
of business — to use its resources and engage in activities designed to
increase its profits’ (Friedman 1962: 133). Similarly, power resources theory
generally assumes that employers do not promote social policies but are
either ‘antagonists’ or ‘consenters’ (Korpi 2006). But why, then, should com-
panies provide such policies? As we witness an expansion of family policies
at the company level in a number of advanced OECD economies (cf. Evans
2001), the key question to be addressed in this article is, how can we explain
this development?
To answer this question, we have chosen British and German companies, as
they operate in very different environments. According to widely accepted
categorizations, Germany and the UK are said to have very different forms of
capitalism and welfare state arrangements. Germany belongs to the group of
co-ordinated market economies with a conservative welfare state, while the
UK is usually characterized as a liberal market economy (LME) with a liberal
welfare state (Esping-Andersen 1990, 1999; Hall and Soskice 2001). In addi-
tion, the industrial relations in Germany and Britain vary considerably. An
approach based on social partnership is said to be predominant in Germany,
while industrial relations in the UK are characterized by liberal and highly
voluntaristic arrangements (Keller 2004; Marchington et al. 2004).1Despite
these differences, policies in both countries have promoted strong male bread-
winner models in the past (Daly and Rake 2003; Lewis 1992).
In the first section of our article, we review the existing literature with
regard to the conditions and causes leading to corporate social and family
policies before presenting our research design. Subsequently, we analyse the
conditions and causal pathways leading to the institutionalization of corpo-
rate family policies. Our analysis builds on a 2004 survey commissioned by
the European Foundation and on data generated through a 2007 survey we
conducted among the companies listed in the German DAX, M-DAX and
S-DAX as well as the British FTSE 100. In the conclusions, we aim to assess
742 British Journal of Industrial Relations
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2009.
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