TRANSFORMATIONS IN WORK 261
leagues “have had nothing but cars and trips on their minds,” and after
work, they “prefer to withdraw and watch TV in the privacy of their own
homes rather than talking with people in social situations.”^51
The demise of the SED regime also had consequences for West Ger-
many. After the collapse of the Communist bloc, the elites in the West no
longer found it necessary to ensure that their own social model would be
more attractive than the social paternalism of the East. The acceleration
of globalization since 1990, as well as the debates over production sites
that had been unleashed by it, served to legitimize the “dismantling” of
social benefi ts, and the weakened trade unions could do little to stop this.
Likewise, the changing demographic composition of the population, com-
bined with the sharply rising costs for unemployment insurance resulting
from the growth in structural unemployment, led to a dramatic redis-
tribution of funds within the budget for social services. Simultaneously,
ways of doing business and property relations also changed. On the one
hand, corporate decision-making became increasingly reliant on the cur-
rent constellations of the fi nancial markets and the stock exchanges. On
the other hand, hedge funds that sought to achieve short-term increases
in profi tability gained more and more infl uence over corporate politics in
their role as major shareholders.
All of these factors—forced globalization, the transition from “stake-
holders” to “shareholders,” a high rate of structural unemployment, the
end of the Cold War, and the waning pressure to keep up a high standard
of social services that went along with it—stripped away at the coop-
erative model of “Rhenish capitalism” that had prevailed in West Ger-
many since the 1950s with its strong welfare state. A large percentage of
the population was still employed along Fordist lines with well-paying,
permanent, full-time jobs that had clearly regulated working hours and
strictly separate spheres of work and private life. Yet, the percentage of
people with precarious job situations grew. More than ever before, cor-
porate executives focused on cutting their human resource costs. Indeed,
the switch to the use of the term “nonwage labor costs” (Lohnneben-
kosten) as opposed to “social security contributions” (Sozialabgaben) at
the beginning of the 1990s was not a coincidence because it refl ected
this colder social climate. Around the same time, moreover, the talk of the
“end of our work society” died down. In its place, everyone began talking
about the “new complexity” of the times.^52
The West German IT Sector as a Forerunner
for “New” Corporate CulturesCorporate worlds have always been complicated and in fl ux. Yet digitali-
zation and the constantly shifting international division of labor have only