TOPOLOGÍAS

Within the social sciences, a distinction can made between objectivist and subjectivist approaches, which, as Burrell and Morgan (1994) show, each rest on a specific set of epistemological and methodological assumptions. These specific metatheoretical assumptions in turn influence the choice of methods to be employed.

From an objectivist perspective, which rests on a positivist epistemology and a nomothetic methodology, the goal of social science is to “seek to explain and predict what happens in the social world by searching for regularities and causal relationships between its constituent elements“ (Burrell and Morgan 1994: 5). As Blaikie (1993: 15) emphasises, the main objective of an objectivist research approach is to establish generalisations and law-like statements which apply across time and space. In contrast, the subjectivist approach is anti-positivist, (or in Blaikie’s terms

interpretivist) and idiographic in nature. This means that the main goal of subjectivist research approaches lies in understanding ‘from the inside’, or as Burrell and Morgan put it, “from the point of view of the individuals who are directly involved in the activities which are to be studied“ (Burrell and Morgan 1994: 5). In short, in subjectivist research the goal is a holistic understanding of the phenomenon under investigation. These different metatheoretical assumptions are also expressed in the different value assigned to structure and agency in explaining social phenomena, i.e., the analytical focus. Following Scott (1997), one can distinguish between objectivist and subjectivist approaches as follows: while the former concentrates primarily on the macro-level of the analysis of social systems and structures, which in this perspective exist

independent of individual actors and furthermore influence or even determine their actions, the subjectivist approach puts the individual at the centre of the analysis. According to Scott (1997: 202), “the common thread in [...] subjectivist approaches is to see social organization — social institutions and ‘society’ itself — as the direct creations of individual acting subjects“. The focal point of subjectivist analyses are thus

individual actions and the individual goals, motives, and perceptions which underlie them.

This research belongs to the second category. The central objective of this research is to explore the potential for solidarity in cross-site multi-level structures and processes of employee interest representation on the basis of an analysis of social processes within the CWC from the point of view of its members and constituents. This approach is

based on the assumption that the behaviour of the CWC as a collective actor is the result of social interaction processes shaped by individual interests and perceptions. These interaction processes do not take place in a vacuum, however. The interests and perceptions of the individual actors are themselves influenced by the social context in which they are embedded. Against this background, Hyman (1989) stresses the necessity of a dialectical approach: “There is [...] a complex two-way process in which our goals, ideas and beliefs influence and are influenced by social structure. To do justice to its complexity, industrial sociologists must be attuned to this dynamic interaction between structure and consciousness“ (Hyman 1989: 76).

The pursuit of a dialectic and actor-centred approach requires the use of qualitative, explorative methods. This is particularly true for this research, since the actual operation of CWCs has hardly been investigated empirically. As Ragin (1987: 35) emphasises, qualitative methods are sensitive to complexity and thus enable a holistic understanding of the phenomenon under investigation. In order to be able to grasp the motivation of the CWC members and the meaning which they ascribe to the

phenomenon under investigation, this research thus relies heavily on qualitative techniques such as participant observation, interviews, and the analysis of archival data (Bryman 1995).

A further consequence of the pursuit of a qualitative approach is the limited number of cases which can be analysed. In contrast to quantitative approaches, which tend to rely on the availability of large data sets which are usually obtained through survey census or sampling methods (Smelser 1976: 205) and are then subjected to multivariate

statistical analysis, qualitative approaches tend to be limited to the investigation of only a few cases at most since it is difficult to sustain attention to complexity across a large number of cases. In technical terms, the subjectivist idiographic orientation of this study leads to a ‘small-N qualitative case-oriented’ research design. In this case, N is very small indeed. It consists of a single case: the multi-level system of employee interest representation at DaimlerChrysler. At the same time, the case study includes further cases within it; because the research covers two levels – i.e., the central works council and its articulation with the local works councils – N is larger with respect to the level of sites and their interactions. The choice of the single case study approach has been chosen because of the necessarily explorative character of the research15_{. As there} is no in-depth empirical investigation of the internal processes of interest aggregation

15 _{Indeed, although the original intention was to compare the approaches to potentially} divergent interests within a German Gesamtbetriebsrat and a French comité de groupe, the lack of any prior research on the subject in either country quickly led to the decision to focus on a single case.

and decision-making within CWCs, this research has ventured into largely uncharted territory.

According to Yin, “a potential vulnerability of the single-case design is that a case may later turn out not to be the case it was thought to be at the outset“ (1994: 41). In order to minimise the chances of misrepresentation and to maximise the access needed to collect the case study evidence, the beginning of fieldwork at DaimlerChrysler was preceded by a phase of participant observation at the EWC Team of the German metalworkers’ union IG Metall. Although I was researching the EWC work of the IG Metall, discussions held during my time at IG Metall with the FTOs responsible for advising a range of CWCs allowed me to gain an understanding of the wide variety of ways in which CWCs actually operate in practice. It also gave me an excellent

opportunity to ensure that the company I would selected for the case study would indeed be a ‘critical’ or ‘revelatory’ case (Yin 1994).

The CWC at DaimlerChrysler was selected for three reasons. First, the CWC at DaimlerChrysler was clearly a very professional and well-organised committee: its ‘best practice’ could thus serve as a particularly instructive case for the investigation of the ways in which CWCs could operate. Since the main objective of this research was to understand how solidarity can be generated within the CWC and to identify the possible lessons for EWCs, this was an important criterion. Second, in order to at least in part be able to assess the gap between rhetoric and reality, I wanted to be able to focus my research on a critical experience. During the course of parallel employment security negotiations, the ability of the CWC at DaimlerChrysler to develop – and maintain—a common line was severely tested. Since this experience had taken place several years prior to my fieldwork there, I hoped that the dust would have settled enough for me to gain access to the detailed progress of that critical experience in the collective consciousness of the CWC. The third reason for selecting DaimlerChrysler was that the head of the department at IG Metall where I was working, who had been the national-level trade union coordinator for DaimlerChrysler for the past 25 years, offered to arrange full access at DaimlerChrysler for me.