Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

concomitantly, the related opportunities and restrictions for firm behaviour change,
the firms adapt their personnel policy strategies accordingly.
Operationalisation: Because I do not have representative data on that subject, I will
analyse at macro level whether the changed incentives in the retirement system have
brought about a rise of employment rates of older workers and in the exit age from the
labour force. At micro level, I will analyse whether the firm has translated the legislative
regulations into works council agreements at firm level and into actual policy, and how this
has influenced the exit patterns of the firms´ workers (as far as statements and data provided
by interview partners will allow). However, my study is not about showing which factors
have the greatest explanatory power for early exit, but how institutions and corporate actors
interrelate, how institutions influence corporate strategies and how the deliberation
procedure is structured at firm level. I will furthermore show how corporate actors reacted
to the changed institutional framework of early exit, recruitment and retention of older
workers (e.g. changed rules for the selection of workers for dismissal in Germany, worsened
conditions for the receipt of the pre-retirement benefit in Poland).
A historical institutionalist concept which is useful for the study of pension systems is
the path dependence approach (Pierson 2000; Myles/Pierson 2001), which draws on the
theory of institutional change developed by North (1990) and adopts it to the study of
political institutions. In the light of the path dependence concept, history matters.
Institutional change is pre-determined because of positive feedback and increasing returns
enjoyed when following the chosen path – “each step along a path produces consequences
which make that path more attractive in the next round and raises the costs of shifting to an
alternative path” (Myles/Pierson 2001: 312). With regard to pension reforms, this means
that the path along which a certain institution has developed defines the tracks along which
it may evolve in the future and accounts for its stability. Thus, the costs of shifting to a prefunded
scheme are especially high for mature PAYG pension schemes due to the double
payment problem.
The path dependence thesis (Myles/Pierson 2001) substantiates hypothesis 6: In both
analysed countries, the institutional context and the personnel policy of firms will
rather hinder a reversal of the early exit trend and the increase of activity rates of
older workforce than facilitate such a development. In Germany, which has partly
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