5. The role of enterprises in welfare provision: complexifying the welfare mix?

Conveners: Marie-Thérèse Letablier, Stefania Sabatinelli

Nullmeier Frank qnd Klenk Tanja (University of Bremen, DE)
The role of enterprises in welfare provision – Enterprises as producers of social security products

Bridgen Paul and Meyer Traute (University of Southampton, UK )
Corporate labour requirements, industrial relations and occupational pension reform in Britain and Germany

Haataja Anita (The Social Insurance Institution - Kela, Helsinki, FI), Kauhanen Merja (Labour Institute for Economic Research, Helsinki, FI)
Extent and explanations for employer-based part-time work in the Nordic countries.

Rohrer Linda (University of Berne, CH)
The role of competition regulation and skill requirements in preference formation of the Swiss textile employers

Enterprises are emerging as an important actor in providing welfare for their employees and their families. Their commitment can be observed in a number of fields: retirement policies, health coverage, mobility policies, measures for the reconciliation of work and family responsibilities. The role of enterprises in welfare provision varies across and within countries. It is, then, interesting to investigate if such a variation is coherent with the classifications of welfare regimes existing in literature. Variation also concerns the patterns of coordination with other stakeholders involved in welfare provision (State and local public levels, third sector organizations, for profit actors) in which the enterprises providing welfare measures are embedded in. The definition of welfare mix is, then, questioned, and possibly made more complex, also due to the necessary process of negotiation with Trade Unions and employees’ committees, which entails a confrontation of different interests and objectives.

The legitimation of enterprises’ commitment is not obvious for a part of citizens, policy makers, as well as observers. Nevertheless, the scarcity of public resources, reducing the capacity to finance services and interventions, may increase social and political consensus around an active role of enterprises in welfare provision. A typical case is represented by child care, a crucial area in terms of gender equality and support of female employment. Such services are extremely expensive for local public authorities. The availability of enterprises to invest in care solutions for their employees (in order to reduce turn-over and absence from work) can thus become a tool to widen the take-up rate of both potential and effective demand. This raises, in turn, questions about regulation models, control power, quality levels.

Abstracts should tackle one or more of these aspects, presenting the object, field and methodology of the proposed analysis and some, also preliminary, results. Comparative approaches will be priviliged.

Conference theme

The Annual ESPAnet Conference 2009 focuses on the future of the welfare state. More precisely it will address paths of social policy innovation highlighting existing constraints, path dependencies and opportunities of social policy change. The conference provides a forum to address theoretical and methodological questions, to reflect on inter- and multi-disciplinarity in social policy research and to discuss new analytical trends. It will also deal with changing paradigms in the concept of the welfare state and in the actual configuration of social policy innovation in Europe and beyond. Shifts in underlying basic principles will also be addressed, ideas or objectives, and factors which might drive such changes and what directions they might indicate for the future of the welfare state.

ImPORTANT DATES

15 March 2009 = deadline for abstract submission
27 April 2009 = Notification of selected abstracts
2 May 2009 = registrations open
15 Jun 2009 = Early bird registration and deadline for (some) hotel options
15 August 2009 = Deadline for paper submission
1 September 2009 = Papers online
17-19 September 2009 = Conference