Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

In line with the approach, I will understand structural factors as economic factors which
are external to the firm and exert impact on its policy e.g. in the form of economic pressure
for rationalisation. As relevant macro-economic factors, I regard the economic situation in
the analysed countries, the competition on the market, ownership transformation of
companies, unemployment and framing conditions on the labour market (demand for certain
qualifications or regional differences in demand), rationalisation and modernisation
processes.
Personnel management has been also studied from the behavioural science and
institutional economics angle. The framework of behavioural science is, alike neo-classical
theory, interested in decisions within organisations but starts on the premises of bounded
rationality and recognises the organisation as independent variable, within which
heterogeneous interests and divergent power relations exist (Berger/Bernhard-Mehlich
2001: 134). The framework can be applied to explain decisions in organisations and
relations between employer and employee. The theory of incentives and contributions
(March/Simon 1958) may help explain why it could be profitable for managers to include
age management policies and to retain older workers. Bartscher-Finzer/Martin (1998)
explicate with the help of this theory that organisations pursue a uniform personnel policy
(in the meaning of politics) but they apply differential incentives and different singular
measures of personnel policy (Personalarbeit) for different groups of workers, according to
the rule that “specific job performance requires specific incentives” (ibid: 116, 140-1; own
transl.). In case of complex tasks, the employer would strives to ensure a stable and longlasting
employment relationship or to increase the identification of the workers with the firm
through participative and inclusive measures (ibid: 136-139).
The firm-structural approach and the theory of incentives and contributions lead to
hypothesis 2B: Firms have a uniform personnel policy for all workers. Older workers
are regarded by firms as a ´problem´ or a ´resource´ depending on their individual
potential.
The competing hypothesis 2A and hypothesis 2B are an answer to the diverging view on
human capital in general and older workers in particular applied by classical and neoclassical
strands of economics, on the one hand, and theories of social action which broaden
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