Dr. Karoline Mis

The arrangement of the industrial relations varies between the different nation states and depends on historically shaped experiences, juridical and economic basic conditions and can be described as a specified path dependency for each country. It is a not concluded process and especially the CEE (Central and Eastern Europe) countries are still confronted by a big adaptation pressure of their national working relations.

Similar to other CEE countries Poland's industrial relations have been installed in a "topdown" process during the change of the political system in 1989. Because of the lack of representative employers' associations, the fragmentation of Poland's Trade Unions and finally because of an insufficient installed social dialogue on the national level the industrial relations are in general characterized as weak.

The biggest potential for the Europeanization of national working relations is awarded to the European Works Councils because "the inclusion of CEE sites into EWC's (European Works Councils) offers the potential to strengthen local structures in CEE countries more generally, insofar as exchange of experience and learning processes among EWC members can also contribute to stabilising national representation strategies and practice on a case by case basis."

The PhD-thesis deals with this impact of European Works Councils on the industrial relations of Poland. Therefore following hypotheses are made:

1. The participation of Polish employee's representatives in functioning EWCs has new effects on their operational, union and national position. In the best case the Polish EWC members get additional scopes of action in the national context.
2. The more proactively an EWC operates, the higher is the chance of a positive influence on its members.
3. Positive effects are more likely when a strong tradition of industrial relations does exist in the motherland of the company.

Questions on the impact of EWC membership in post-socialist member states of the European Union have been picked rarely in the literature. However, one prominent research summarizes its finding "that there seems to be a clear correlation between pro-active EWC experience and impact on industrial relations and corporate culture in the NMS (New Member States)."

The aim of this dissertation project will be to get to the bottom of this finding and to analyze this clear correlation between EWC membership and industrial relations in Poland.

Her work deals with the EU-induced domestic processes of change in industrial relations in a post-communist EU member state. Using the example of European Works Councils (EWCs), which are seen from an optimistic research perspective as the engines of Europeanization processes, Karoline Mis examines their interactions with the national and company level in Poland. The core assumption of her analysis is that Polish EWC members benefit from their participation in the EWC in a different way than, for example, their Western European colleagues. Contrary to previous research practice, the focus of the analysis is therefore on the national/company level and not on the actual EWC, so that Europeanization processes can be identified at the various levels using a "most-different case studies" research design. By selecting different cases, any "home country effects" or sector-specific characteristics can be minimized as additional influencing factors. The selection of cases also deliberately avoids prominent EWCs from the automotive and metal sectors, although it is precisely these "participation-oriented" EWCs that are considered by many researchers to have the sole potential for Europeanization. The hypothesis here is that the requirements for an effective EWC could be lower and thus its success would have to be measured using different parameters than has been the case to date in the Western European-dominated research landscape, if this question is transferred to the context of industrial relations in Central and Eastern Europe. In her work, she attempts to break up the geographical imbalance within EWC research by, on the one hand, drawing on Polish research literature that has not been recognized to date and, on the other hand, integrating a purely Central Eastern European EWC into her selection of cases, thus opening up a blank spot within EWC research. Finally, by developing her own conceptual model of Europeanization, her work also attempts to make a contribution to the conceptual-theoretical deficit in EWC research that has been attested to date.

"Transformation and Europeanization processes of industrial relations in Poland using the example of European Works Councils"

The dissertation was published by Nomos Verlag in 2015:
Mis, Karoline (2015): European Works Councils in Poland. A path to the Europeanization of national and company industrial relations, Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft.

Link to the publication

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Karoline Mis has been working on her dissertation since 2010 on the topic: "Transformation and Europeanization processes of industrial relations in Poland using the example of European works councils." Prior to this, she gained practical work experience in an employee-oriented management consultancy in Essen and at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Warsaw. Prior to her Master's degree in European Studies at Viadrina University in Frankfurt an der Oder, she studied Modern and Contemporary History and Applied Cultural Studies at the University of Karlsruhe.

• Kost, Klaus/Lötscher, Lienhard/Weingarten, Jörg (2011): New and innovative approaches to regional development through entrepreneurial business development. Series: edition der Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, Wirtschaft und Finanzen, Volume 261. Düsseldorf.
• PCG - PROJECT CONSULT GmbH (2010): Social Dialogue and Labor-Oriented Cooperation in the New EU Member States. Structures of cooperation between employee representatives and social partners with labor-oriented cooperation networks in Central and Southern Europe. A cooperation project of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Bratislava, solution4org Budapest and PCG - Project Consult GmbH in Essen.
• Karoline Mis, Nicolas Rode, Jörg Weingarten (PCG); Odile Chagny, Eric Morales, Dominique Sellier (Secafi); Birte Homann, Prof. Dr. Herbert Wulf, Dr. Peter Wilke (Wilke, Maack und Partner): Naval shipbuilding in Europe - Current Developments and Perspectives 2020. The study is published as part of the project "New Perspectives for the European Marine Industry: Challenges and Opportunities for Employment and Innovation".
• Reinhard Röhrig, Karoline Mis, Stefan Wieschebrock in collaboration with Jörg-Peter Skroblin and Frank Blauschke: Branchenreport Verpackungsindustrie, Branchenanalyse erstellt im Auftrag der IG Metall und der IG BCE. Frankfurt am Main 2010.