INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION, INWARD INVESTMENT AND THE RESTRUCTURING OFEUROPEAN WORK AND INDUSTRIAL-RELATIONS

This article addresses the interplay between international competition and national institutional patterns. It discusses the involvement of Japanese transnational corporations (TNCs) in the contemporary restruc turing of work organization and industrial relations in three European countries with historically disparate 'systems', Britain, Germany and France. There are three main arguments. First, the operations and inf luence of such firms have been significantly mediated by existing nati onal institutional configurations; second, such institutional complexe s are marked not only by external pressures but also by internal tensi ons and contestation; and third, while Japanese TNCs have made a direc t or indirect contribution to important shifts in work and employment relations, these have not produced a simple convergence towards a new production paradigm.