CORPORATE DEVELOPMENT, STRUCTURAL-CHANGE, AND STRATEGIC CHOICE - BARGAINING AT INTERNATIONAL PAPER COMPANY IN THE 1980S

U.S. paper companies employed both cooperative and aggressive strategi es to introduce changes in work practices in their mills during the 19 80s. What is responsible for this dichotomy remains to be explained. A nalysis of bargaining at International Paper Company during the 1980s reveals that significant changes in product markets, product mix, the technology of production, bargaining structures, and labor markets at both the firm and mill level, as well as the union's own evolving stra tegy, were important to the company's shift from an accommodative to a more aggressive strategy by the late 1980s.