Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

age security and the changes therein as a result of pension reforms) not as determining
variable but as factors which influence and are themselves influenced by firm behaviour. On
the one hand, institutional regulations set the frame within which firms can take action on
issues pertaining to older workforce and early retirement. E.g., German firms can use the
expiry of the early retirement scheme (Altersteilzeit) as an opportunity to introduce age(ing)-
friendly working conditions. Firms can also thwart the plans of the legislator and develop
firm-based early exit options. On the other hand, the legislator can make allowances to firms
which are shedding labour due to economic reasons. Such a situation occurred in Poland in
the 1990s. As result of adjustment to market economy and in preparation for privatisation,
firms conducted mass layoffs and were supported by the legislator which introduced early
retirement ´due to economic reasons´. This way, firms as actors exerted influence on the
institution of old-age security.
Windhoff-Héritier based her approach on Elster´s (1979: 112-117) ‘two-filter model’.
The model views human behaviour as the result of two filtering processes. The first filtering
process is determined by structural constraints; it “cuts down the set of abstractly possible
courses of action and reduces it to the vastly smaller subsets of feasible actions” (ibid: 113).
The second filtering process is a rational choice between those subsets. In distinction to
Elster´s model, Windhoff-Héritier (1991: 39) stresses that “political actors themselves
create the institutions which in turn constitute political constraints”. Moreover, institutions
“set restrictions, but at the same time they offer opportunities” and restrictions are not
deterministic but create a space within which strategic action can happen (ibid: 40, 41). The
focus of Windhoff-Héritier´s (1991) observation is the development of political institutions.
I will use the actor-centred institutionalism of Mayntz and Scharpf (1995) as a broader
approach, on which my model of interrelations between actors at national level is based
(Fig. 3 in section 3.1.), and the approach of Windhoff-Héritier (1991) as an embedded
model and as basis for my model of firm agency (Fig. 1) and individual agency (Fig. 2). In
difference to Windhoff-Héritier (1991: 39), I do not observe the two-way relations between
political institutions which constitute restrictions and which themselves “originate in the
individual choices of man”, and extend my analysis to corporate actors.
Based on the combined institutional and rational choice approaches and the firmstructural
approach (presented in section 2.2.), which recognise the role of the firm in the
utilisation and externalisation of the workforce and in the setting of framing conditions for
preserving work capacity, I derive hypothesis 1: If the institutional context changes and,
13