Comparative Industrial Relations

Primerjalni industrijski odnosi

Course credits:

4.00 ECTS / 30 (30 hours of lectures, 0 hours of exercises, 0 hours of seminars, 0 hours other forms of work)

Course holder:

doc. dr. Miroljub Ignjatović

Type:

Elective expert

Language:

English

Semester:

First semester

Study degree

2. level

Course execution:

• Postgraduate Programme of European Studies

Prerequisits:

Students are allowed to participate in the course provided that they have completed the enrolment procedure. The basic social sciences acquirements (sociology, political sciences and economics). Completed seminar paper is the prerequisite to approach the examination.

Objectives and competences

The main objective is that students acquire basics of the comparative analysis in the field: identification of the common denominators as well as the main differences of the selected European and non-European industrial relations systems. In these way students will acquire knowledge and competences which are relevant for all industrial relation actors at all levels, especially for HR experts and managers who are embedded into the accelerated internationalisation of the national economies, for experts and leaders of employers and employees organisations, as well as for the creators and executants in public agencies and services at national and the EU level.

Content (Syllabus outline)

The course is focused on the comparison of the industrial relations development in selected group of the EU countries on the one hand, and selected cases of non-EU countries on the other. Presentation of the selected systems’ development is limited to the post-war period and, within it, especially at the last three decades when the major changes of the post-war global order has occurred. The interpretive scheme is based on the varieties of capitalism (VoC) theory which identifies two basic, ideal types of capitalism – liberal market economy (LME) and coordinated market economy (CME) i.e. different institutional arrangement ensuring different answers to coordination problems that companies are facing in the market economies. Therefore, in terms of VoC theory the course enables wider comparisons between (European and non-European) systems at the global level. The course deals with development of concrete historical forms of industrial relations trying to identify common features as well as the peculiarities concerning these relations. After the presentation of the conceptual starting point the course deals with following issues: firstly, employees, employers and state in the LME and CME economies; secondly, formation and implementation of the rules concerning work and employment in LME and CME economies; thirdly, different results of these specific regulative processes and their different developmental impacts; fourthly, the analysis deals with four analytical levels: the micro, mezzo, national (and EU) and the wider international level of the selected industrial relations systems.

Intended learning outcomes:

The acquired knowledge should enable students to deal with the problem of the competitive pressures which systematically cause lowering of the work standards. The general approach of the discipline and the comparisons of the different industrial relations systems should inspire them to search and form autonomously possible democratic answers to the pressures of the globalised competition. These answers should be optimal in terms of the employees’ development, economic efficiency and the environmental /ecological sustainability.

Learning and teaching methods:

The key teaching methods are lectures and short essays understood as papers where students are trying to define their own critical position and are capable to defend it.

Assessment

30 % Seminar paper 70 % oral exam

Obligatory literature

Additional literature