Liempt, Adriaan Van - Developing Institutions

, , 2006. Paperback 24x17. Academisch Proefschrift. Industrial relations in the Dutch IT industry have developed in quite an extraordinary manner from a Dutch point of view. Unions were virtually absent in the Dutch IT industry till the start of the 1990s and the industry was predominantly shaped by entrepreneurs and foreign companies. This turned the Dutch IT industry into a lush oasis of individuality amidst a collectivistic ocean. 87 Percent of the Dutch labour force falls under the scope of a collective agreement. In the IT industry this figure was approximately 25 percent in 2005 and used to be much lower. During the period of 1996-1998 three major Dutch IT companies started using their own collective agreement, which was quite a shock at the time. Was not the Dutch IT industry an example of how industrial relations would be shaped in the future in the Netherlands? In this pioneering study on the history of Industrial relations in the Dutch IT industry, Van Liempt tries to answer why these collective agreements came about. In this research Van Liempt argues that though institutions may by rigid and inefficient, institutional development is not a matter of institutions changing over time, but rather a process of re-inventing new solutions based on new problems. For one can wonder whether these new collective agreements in the Dutch IT industry have not reshaped the relations between unions and employers in the process..