Conference on Organized labour
Responses to the Conference Paper
Tor Claussen
Stavanger, Norway
7 August 1998
I am a senior researcher at Rogaland Research in Stavanger, Norway. Until recently I was a project leader of one of the biggest social science based projects in enterprise development in Norway, involving more than 12 researchers and 30 enterprises with approx. 100 000 employees, named Enterprise Development - ED 2000. One of the main purposes of ED 2000 is to illuminate how international management concepts based primarily on direct participation and a Scandinavian model of representative participation can contribute to the further development of industrial democracy that enhances the competitive advantage of different enterprises, based on experience from enterprise developmental projects in the participating companies.
In the Scandinavian tradition of social democratic co-operation between working life parties there is a system based on the interplay between law and agreements. This system is the core of the tradition where representative participation is a dominating feature. The different interests of the working life parties have played a crucial role in the creation of this system. Does TQM, direct participation and the focus on the common interest of the working life parties indicate that the Scandinavian traditions of representative participation have lost their relevance, at least in enterprise development? Is TQM a liberal tradition more suited as a model for corporate democracy consistent with a perspective of a pluralistic liberal political democracy?
Questions of this kind are dealt with closely linked to the research project ED 2000 where some of these challenges have become the cornerstone of the developmental efforts involved.
We find the invitation from IILS extremely interesting and important. Since we are invited to respond, we will basically concentrate on other key issues which we feel could be interesting to examine.
Based on our own research outlined above, we are specifically interested in challenges facing industrial democracy related to the new international management concepts and the more or less intrinsic democratic and institutional aspects they represent. How could they be utilised? What are the benefits and what are undermining aspects of these trends? What changes are required in laws, regulations and agreements to face these new trends?
What can be the future responses and what implication related to work place democracy and industrial democracy can be expected?
These are some of the number of questions which are raised and dealt with both in our research project and in my Ph.D. work, which relates to democratic aspects of enterprise development influenced both by international management concepts and local/national models of participation and coo-determination among the working life parties.
We look forward to future co-operation and contact. Should our response be of interest, we will express our great interest in further contact on these issues.
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