Employers’ Coordination in the Context of Globalization: The Swiss Machine Industry since the 1990s
Based on a “Varieties of Capitalism” perspective, this contribution analyses the evolution of the role played by business elites in the functioning of industrial relations and corporate governance during the last thirty years. By focusing on the coordination of business associations and interlocking directorships within the Swiss machine industry, we aim to show a convergence of coordinated market economies towards the Anglo-Saxon model of liberal market economy centred on competitive markets. Several trends are observable in the 1990s. The exit of firms, the increasing attraction of associations rejecting the bargaining system and the business offensive in favour of the decentralization and flexibilization of industrial relations have weakened the role of traditional associations as non-market forms of coordination. The analysis of interlocking directorships indicates the end of bank control over industrial firms and a decline of the integration of big MEM companies in the national company network. The coordination of MEM firms within the sector remains comparatively high. The research concludes that a process of convergence towards the liberal model of market economy centred on competition and stock markets has undoubtedly taken place, but underlines the persistence of non-market forms of coordination that are more and more concentrated at the sector level.