Labor relations in the information economy: the german automotive sector as test case

Manuel Castells is most famous for his theory of an “information society” in which the world is “boundaryless,” identities shifted, and place-bound social relations transformed by a nebulous “space of flows,” of finance, telecommunications, migration, and tourism.[1] Yet, elsewhere, in his book on Finland, he argues that the information society is malleable and can co-exist with strong state and high levels of equality (Castells and Himanen 2002). This raises the question of how the changes he identifies affect other domains, such as welfare states, industrial relations systems, human resources, and so on. Because he has so little to say about the world of work, however, the effect of these new technologies and identities on industrial relations arrangements remains open. [1] Many thanks to Virginia Doellgast, Marco Hauptmeier, Damien Grimshaw, Kyoung-Hee Yu, Ursula Holtgrewe and Nathan Lillie who provided helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper; thanks as well to the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Societies, Cornell University’s Center for European Studies, Cornell-ILR’s International Programs and the German Academic Exchange Service for funding this research.

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