classic study by Dore (1973) on highly similar British and Japanese electrical
engineering enterprises. The major conclusion of this study was confirmed
time and again by subsequent research. All of this shows that there are a
multitude of ways to achieve the same industrial, or service production, task.
The multiplicity is rooted in institutions of vocational and general education
and training, standard organizing practice, industrial relations, labor markets,
social stratification and mobility, occupational profiles, relations between men
and women. Structures and people’s expectations differ a great deal from one
country to another. What is more, differences along such lines are systemati-
cally interrelated. This is institutionalism in a nutshell: stable and interrelated
patterns prevail over time; any educational or training arrangement will be
interdependent with a corresponding organizing, industrial relations, occupa-
tional structure, social stratification etc. arrangement. They tend to come
together.
Structural interrelationships as foci of institutionalismLet us now discuss a number of findings in the light of institutional theory, to
continue the analysis of Table 5.1. We tried to sum up the institutional inter-
relationships of France, Germany and the United Kingdom in a set of three
law-like statements focusing on the interdependence of the organizational and
the human resources dimension (Maurice et al., 1980: 80ff.). These focus on
in-plant organization and human resources structures:
1 The higher the practical professionalization of workers, technical employees
and supervisors and managers, the less technical and authoritative tasks are
split off from shop-floor roles and organized into differentiated jobs, and the
less such activities are differentiated internally in the white-collar area. This
relationship explains how different measures for job specialization,
organizational differentiation and professionalization in the three
countries are obtained. France exhibits the greatest amount of speciali-
zation and differentiation, and the smallest amount of practical pro-
fessionalization; Germany has the smallest amount of specialization
and differentiation, and the greatest amount of practical professionali-
zation; the UK is somewhere in between. The professional autonomy
of shop-floor production workers is most highly developed in
Germany, and production management is therefore more technical
than command-centered.
2 The larger the discrepancy in training and competence between production
and maintenance components of the shop-floor, the greater the separation
between production and maintenance activities and careers. This combined
organizational and human resources effect is strongest in the UK. This
society has brought forth a characteristic difference between the
Cross-national Differences in Human Resources 125