Management Strategies in Transnational Workspaces

Chapter 3 combines institutional theory with strategic perspectives drawn from the sociology of organizations to examine how industrial relations actors “enact” EU rules at the micro-level of the workplace. The aim of this chapter, therefore, is to study how micro-level societal actors such as firms, unions, works councils, and individual workers interact with the changing regulatory configuration. It studies how employers enact the posting framework creatively by circumventing rules. This chapter demonstrates how these mechanisms initiate a process of institutional change through power dynamics at the micro-level that are generally relevant for theories about institutional change. In pursuit of a more nuanced understanding of the regulatory dynamics of posted work, this chapter identifies the ways in which actors draw on different power resources to influence the outcomes of negotiations or to implement policies without negotiation at the workplace level.