between and within countries. Differences between sectors are inextricably
bound up with industrial structure and industrial relations institutions. A
comparison of the automotive and financial services sectors will illustrate the
point. In automotive manufacturing, cross-national comparisons at company
level are already an important consideration; in financial services, they hardly
feature except in the case of specialist groups, which tend to be non-unionized.
Automobile manufacture is exceptional in the degree of homogenization of
activities and the accompanying integration of operations for their delivery,
being dominated by a small number of very large MNCs with increasingly inte-
grated European and in some cases world-wide markets and production opera-
tions. An internal market for capital has long been a feature and the use of
‘coercive comparisons’ integral to its operation. Finance services are also
increasingly dominated by large MNCs. Yet most of these organizations are
involved in an increasingly diverse range of activities embracing both banking
(retail, corporate and investment) and insurance. Most importantly, retail
banking, where most unionized employees are to be found, remains largely a
domestic affair, albeit increasingly influenced by global developments (for fur-
ther details, see Sisson and Marginson, 2001).
Differences within the sectors can be related to the specifics of the nature
and extent of integration, ownership, market, geographical spread, organiza-
tion structure and the ability of employee representatives to mount their own
‘coercive comparisons’. A comparison of Volkswagen and Opel in the automo-
tive sector in Germany illustrates the point. Volkswagen is a German-owned
company with an element of public ownership, which has the bulk of its work-
force not only in Germany but in one particular area of the country. The acqui-
sitions that it has made in other countries, such as SEAT in Spain and Skoda in
the Czech Republic, produce their own marques. Opel belongs to a US-owned
company, which has a number of operations across Europe as well as Germany
producing the same or very similar products. Volkswagen has been able to
achieve a position for itself where demand tends to outstrip supply, whereas
Opel (like Ford) has to rely on a high volume approach.
Differences between countries reflect two factors: the extent to which the
economies of sub-groups of countries are already more integrated with each
other than they are with those of the EEA as a whole; and the similarity or other-
wise of industrial relations structures and traditions, which shapes the imme-
diate potential for co-ordination initiatives. Thus, co-operation amongst both
employers’ organizations and amongst trade unions in the Nordic countries
reflects both the comparative depth of the economic integration that already
exists between these countries and important similarities in industrial relations
institutions and traditions. A similar argument applies, although a little less
forcefully, to the countries which were previously part of the unofficial
‘Deutsch-Mark zone’: Austria, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands (see
Marginson and Schulten, 1999) and which, as noted earlier, have been the
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