Concepts and Transformation - Volume 2, Issue 3, 1997

Global economic competition is currently placing modern welfare states under increasing pressure to change. New kinds of solutions must be sought in all spheres and at all levels of the state's functioning. But it is very difficult to mediate the macro- and micro-level approaches in a sensible manner and to utilize the innovatory potentials of social science in actual research practice. This article describes a current ongoing action research project within the City of Helsinki for the development of work in a number of the City's workplaces. The local developmental activities are closely connected to broader discussions about the development of the city's internationalization strategies and of the role of high-quality welfare services in their realization. The project assumes that it is possible to build a fruitful interaction between the development of new practices at local level and the broader strategic discussions that are going on in other echelons of the City's organization.

This article is an attempt to integrate the efficiency perspectives that are traditionally nurtured in business schools with the employee participation perspectives outlined in studies of industrial relations. Global communication between business units, and employee participation and co-determination within business units, both have impact on corporate efficiency. The two approaches are synthesized in a conceptual framework combining the articulation of interests and resistance with value-creation and value destruction.

The following contribution to this debate should be understood as originating from the viewpoint of a scientist associated with the trade unions, who from the beginning of the 1970's was closely involved in both the conceptual and the practical development of the themes which can best be jointly described as the Humanization of Work (in German "Humanisierung der Arbeit", or HdA). The German Federal Government's action program of the same name, dating from 1974, and a series of related publications (published by Campus) have provided unique insights into the complexity of workplace restructuring schemes which are still forthcoming. In my discussion I will concentrate on the problems of the achievement of new goals, using the example of humanization and work structuring, and the challenges associated therewith for trade unions, companies and social sciences, but I shall only be able to touch peripherally on the role of the state.

In the industrialized countries, notably of Europe, the 1990s have seen a systematic erosion of the social protections that the liberal democracies carefully built, as a matter of policy, in the years after the World War II: the protections we know collectively as 'the Welfare State'. This change of direction in social policy is rationalized by appeal to economic arguments: the 'logic of the global market' (it is said) makes it necessary for any major exporting country to enhance its global competitiveness, by reducing the economic burden of 'non-wage ' labour costs imposed on industry as a result of earlier Welfare State policies. The cogency of the economic arguments rests (it is argued here) on confusing two interpretations of the terms 'global' and 'globalization'. In multinational businesses or other global enterprises, these terms imply that the economic role of governments will be reduced, and global competition takes place between corporations.In governments, by contrast, the same terms imply a continued - even, an enhanced - economic role for governments, and global competition takes place, rather, between countries. If tackled on this last mentioned level alone, the economic arguments are, indeed, hard to undercut: addressed One Nation State at a Time (so to say) matters of 'comparative advantage' tempt rival Governments to engage in competitive cost cutting, and the costs of social services are an obvious target for cost cutting, e.g. in France or Sweden. Tackled on a wider ('global') level, this article argues, the same issues can be stated in terms less damaging to Labour and Environmental interests.