Das deutsche Produktionsmodell unter dem Druck des Shareholder Value

The industrial restructuring of the 1990s has a twofold character. The wide reception of different modes of direct participation during the first half of the 1990s was followed by a much more restrictive development in the second half of the decade. More shareholder value-oriented forms of corporate governance encourage cyclical changes of management orientation resulting from the structural contradictions of a flexible and market-oriented form of corporate organisation. Contrary to the beginning of reorganization when shareholder value-orientation had the effect of a catalyst for the introduction of direct participation, both orientations led to a dramatic reduction of long time compromises (between employers and employees) in the second half of the 1990s. The introduction of a more shareholder value-oriented governance has led to the completion of a market-centred mode of control, which has become the decisive binding element within a new configuration of management principles and industrial relations. This development is empirically examined in a study undertaken between 1993 and 2000 in 36 companies of the automobile, electronic, supplier and machine tool industry as well as in the data processing branch.