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The relevance of subsidiary embeddedness in a macro-institutional environment can in no way overshadow the importance of the micro-political agency of social actors. While some researchers focus on local management's "embedded agency," we focus on a less-developed aspect: workers' "embedded agency." In order to do so, we propose an analytical model that is based on the Varieties of Capitalism model and its subsequent developments, but that also includes the workers as an active agent. This model allows us to observe the institutional resources that workers can actively mobilize. We specifically focus on the characteristics of industrial relations and education institutional sub-systems. We apply the developed analytical model to the case of the Brazilian subsidiaries of a highly global multinational corporation (MNC). More specifically, we discuss three examples of workers' "embedded agency." These bring attention to workers' collective and individual actions as well as intra- and extra-subsidiary mobilization of institutional resources.
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For the purpose of trade union renewal, it is suggested that trade unions need to convert themselves from being institutions centred on employer-employee relations to open source ones engaged with broader social justice issues. In this article, we offer two elements to the debate on trade union revival: first, we focus on two rapidly emerging economies with a corporatist and state-centered union structure (i.e., Brazil and India); second, in the context of these two countries, we challenge the idea that informal workers are a burden for trade union organizations. We consider the possible contributions that informal workers could make towards the renewal of trade unions in these two countries. We argue that trade unions could take advantage of these contributions if they overcome the employee horizon, which originated in Western countries and excludes millions of workers from its purview in Brazil and India. We propose the concept of "homo faber" as a new horizon for trade union organization, which is inclusive of both formal as well as informal workers.
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This article examines changes in levels of confidence in unions and proposes an intra-national comparison between Quebec and the rest of Canada based on the analysis of the three most recent waves of the World Values Survey (WVS) database, of which Canada is part (i.e. 1990, 2000, 2006). After noting differences in the trends of confidence in unions in these two regions, we applied the same logistic regression model to both regions, based on the 2006 WVS wave, in order to bring out the determinants of the propensity of individuals to express confidence in unions. The results show both similarities and differences between the two regions. As for the similarities between Quebec and the rest of Canada, it should be noted that involvement in politics and the fact of being unionized had a positive effect on the respondents’ propensity to have confidence in unions whereas most of the socio-demographic variables had no significant effects. As for the differences, the fact of reporting a higher income had a significant negative impact in Quebec, but was not significant in the rest of Canada. The fact of supporting the NDP in the rest of Canada had a more structuring effect on the propensity of individuals to have confidence in unions than the fact of supporting the BQ in Quebec. Moreover, the greater the extent to which citizens in Quebec identified with left-leaning ideological positions, the more likely they were to have confidence in unions. Finally, the respondent’s level of education was not significant in the rest of Canada but, cetiris paribus, was highly significant and positively related to confidence in unions in Quebec.
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- Journal Article (3)