This article undertakes a historical institutionalist analysis of the German grocery retail industry. It shows that the institutions that shape this non-core industry are not just modifications of those that shape German export-oriented manufacturing core industries. Retail institutions are fundamentally different, and many of them do not promote coordinated relationships of firms. This challenges the assumption of comparative capitalisms research that all-encompassing national institutions characterize Germany as a coordinated market economy. Further, retail institutions have developed their specific characteristics not just over the last decades, as theories of dualization might suggest. Rather, they are frequently rooted in a German petite bourgeoisie or Mittelstand tradition reaching back to the 19th century. A second critical period was the 1960s and early 1970s, when political struggles that resulted from the retail revolution further transformed retail institutions. Based on the literature from various academic disciplines and on original empirical research, the article reconstructs the historical development of the whole set of institutions that has shaped a specific German grocery retail structure dominated by retailers’ cooperatives and hard discount chains. The analysis of an important non-core industry also intends to contribute to a fuller understanding of the institutions that frame the German economy as a whole, including conceivable complementarities between core and non-core sector institutions.

This article examines how the rules of micro-political game playing, based on the global standardization and cost leadership approach of a European ‘hard discounter’, are interpreted in practice in Finland, Germany, Ireland, Spain and the UK. We find that small store size, together with centralized authority relations and power structures, make it difficult for actors to engage effectively in coalition-building and political strategies to influence work and employment. Our comparison also reveals that the interpretation of employment-related rules of the game is country-specific. In Finland, and to some extent in Spain, national employment systems enabled employees to build more robust toolkits for playing micro-political games than in the other countries investigated.

This article investigates an example of variance from the Varieties of Capitalism literature in the case of a longstanding partnership between a major British food retail multinational company and the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW). We argue that it can be seen as a corporate attempt to institutionalize conflict and engage the energies of the employees in achieving corporate goals in a situation of high union membership density and recognition in the UK retail industry. The findings underline the importance of sectoral diversity within national capitalist economies in the context of increased internationalization and the significant role still played by labour even in a liberal market economy such as the UK.

In this article we examine the industrial relations practices of three large European food retailers when they transfer the hypermarket format to other countries. We ask, first, how industrial relations in hypermarkets differ from those in other food retailing outlets. Second, we examine how far the approach characteristic of each company's country-of-origin (Germany, France and the UK) shapes the practices adopted elsewhere. Third, we ask how they respond to the specific industrial relations systems of each host country (Turkey, Poland, Ireland and Spain).

In this chapter, Michael Wortmann examines European retailing and its global expansion. Within the European Union, retail markets are still highly fragmented in many respects. The national retail systems in Europe are significantly different from one another, not only because of differences in consumer preferences, but also because of variations in regulations affecting retailing. Although now slowed by recession, the most rapid transformation in retailing has occurred in Eastern Europe, with West European retailers in many cases playing a leading role. Many of the changes in Europe mirror those in the USA, with the development of self-service, larger store size formats, horizontal expansion, and retailer-led efficiency gains in the supply chain. However, in no European country are these changes as advanced as in the USA. The higher level of regulation not only hampers these changes, but modifies them, leading to new and successful innovations in some cases. Wortmann focuses on retailing in four major countries. In France and the UK, retailing regulation has been relatively weak, so many of the trends have materialized to a much greater extent than in Italy, which has very rigid regulations. Germany is somewhere in between, attempting to limit store size, but not merchandising practices, which has led to the growth of small-store hard discounters, such as Aldi, the owner of Trader Joes in the USA. In part because of the limited opportunities to expand domestically, some of the major European retailers have been leaders in the global expansion of retailing. The chapter includes short case studies of some of the major European retail innovators, such as Carrefour, Aldi, Metro, and Tesco.

Bei den Uberlegungen fur das Programm zum Europaischen Binnenmarkt, das auf die Liberalisierung des Austauschs von Waren, Dienstleistungen, Kapital und Arbeit abzielte, spielte der Einzelhandel keine Rolle. Dies erklart sich wohl daraus, dass zumindest im stationaren Einzelhandel der groste Teil der Wertschopfung lokal, in der Nahe der Kunden, d.h. der Konsumenten erfolgen muss; er stellt also eine typische in-situ Dienstleistung dar, die nicht international gehandelt werden kann. Allenfalls auf der Beschaffungsseite konnen Aktivitaten grenzuberschreitend verlagert und konzentriert werden. Dies gilt um so mehr wie einerseits Lieferanten u.U. in Reaktion auf das Binnenmarktprogramm – ihre Produktionsstrukturen europaweit ausrichten und andererseits viele Konsumguter wie Bekleidung, Spielwaren oder Elektroartikel zunehmend global, d.h. uberwiegend in Asien beschafft werden.

Este artículo estudia la reestructuración que siguió a la fusión de dos multinacionales del sector farmacéutico. Los procesos de fusión y adquisición constituyen un buen escenario para la investigación de la capacidad de las multinacionales para difundir sus políticas y prácticas más allá de las fronteras de sus países de origen. Se seleccionaron cuatro plantas comparables en cuatro países suficientemente diversos por lo que se refiere a sus marcos institucionales de regulación de las relaciones de empleo: Reino Unido, Estados Unidos, Alemania y España. También se seleccionaron diversas políticas puestas en práctica globalmente por la central corporativa. Los resultados de la investigación demuestran que los marcos institucionales nacionales sólo constituyen una constricción relativa para la acción de la central corporativa. Incluso en países altamente regulados, como Alemania o (en menor grado) España, la compañía multinacional demostró su capacidad para difundir las políticas que quería implantar. Más allá de los factores institucionales tradicionales, la investigación demuestra la importancia de los factores políticos(en el plano corporativo, nacional e incluso de planta) para entender el éxito o el fracaso de la central corporativa en la difusión de ciertas prácticas.

This article examines the restructuring process following a cross-border merger in the pharmaceuticals sector. We show how national industrial relations systems account for some aspects of cross-national differences in the process and outcomes of restructuring. However, we also argue that institutionalist approaches to comparative analysis must be complemented by a focus on the material interests of organizational actors and the resources that they can deploy.

The article relates the structural change in German apparel retailing with different patterns of international sourcing. While vertically integrated multiples are sourcing most of their specialised products directly, discounters prefer German agents as intermediaries. Traditional high-end manufacturers also increasingly outsource their manufacturing, becoming more and more similar to retailers. Different sourcing strategies produce losers and winners in German retailing.

Most accounts claiming that there is a distinctive ‘German model’ have focused on manufacturing industries. Less attention has been paid to the service sector, in part because of the claim that many services are not exposed to the international economy. This article examines one service industry in Germany, grocery retailing. This industry is of interest because its most successful firms – the ‘hard discounters’ such as Aldi – deviate from the manufacturing model of production along at least two dimensions: labour relations and product policy. Nevertheless, the hard discounters are very successful, both domestically and abroad. The explanation for the success of the hard discounters offered here is based on both an institution central to Germany – the Mittelstand – as well as industry-specific factors. This complexity cannot be neglected when analysing changes in the German economy