Publications - MPIfG

18
MPIfG Report 1999–2002
gest German firms, a lasting interest arose at the MPIfG in the sociology and politics
of corporate governance. Anke Hassel and Jürgen Beyer carried out a DFG-financed
project on the distribution of net value added in large German firms, which
pursued a theoretical idea proposed by the Dutch economist, Henk de Jong. Martin
Höpner and Rainer Zugehör, of the German industrial relations project, cooperated
closely with others interested in corporate governance, which for a time included
Bastiaan van Apeldoorn with his postdoctoral work on the changing control
structures of large European companies – a project that came to an end when van
Apeldoorn was offered and took a position at the Free University of Amsterdam.
Another contributor to the subject was Michel Goyer with his postdoctoral work
comparing recent changes in corporate governance arrangements in large French
and German companies. Also to be mentioned is Gregory Jackson’s project with
Andrew Gamble and others, mainly of the University of Sheffield, on the “public
interest” in corporate governance in Britain and Germany, which was funded by
the Anglo-German Foundation for the Study of Industrial Society; this project,
too, has meanwhile been completed. In the future Höpner will maintain a focus
on corporate governance, working with former colleagues like Greg Jackson who
is now based in Tokyo as well as with postdoctoral fellows and doctoral students.
The cluster included and includes a number of projects on organized interests
in Europe, in particular on the way in which European integration affects the articulation
of interests at national level and through national associations. The
results of the project on the Europeanization of Organized Interests, carried out
in cooperation with Jelle Visser in Amsterdam and Volker Schneider in Konstanz,
will be published in an edited volume entitled “Governing Interests: Business
Associations Facing Internationalization.” A doctoral dissertation, by Jörg Teuber,
looks at the Europeanization of interest representation in the automobile and the
retail industries of several European countries, and in particular at the way in
which national interest associations link up with supranational associations and
public agencies. Andreas Broscheid’s postdoctoral project tries to model the business
interests within associations. Two completed projects, Werner Eichhorst’s
study on the Posted Workers Directive and Ute Hartenberger-Knaak’s research on
the Social Dialogue, were doctoral dissertations that, among other things, investigated
the interplay between national and European organized interests on specific
issues, showing how European institutions often and increasingly serve as
extended playing fields or observation posts for national interests. This is also the
context of the study by Franciszek Draus on employer associations in Eastern and
Central Europe, which was conducted in cooperation with the European Trade
Union Institute (ETUI) in Brussels.
Recently two projects with a more theoretical outlook have been added to the
cluster. One, organized by Wolfgang Streeck with Kathleen Thelen of Northwestern
University, explores the dynamics of institutional change in contemporary political
economies. The other, in which Streeck and Höpner collaborate with Robert
Boyer and Bruno Amable (CEPREMAP, Paris) and with Colin Crouch (European
University Institute, Florence), investigates the meaning of “complementarity” be-