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Palgrave Macmillan

Welfare Beyond the Welfare State

The Employment Relationship in Britain and Germany

  • Book
  • © 2018

Overview

Authors:
  1. Felix Behling

    1. Sociological Research Institute (SOFI), Göttingen, Germany

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  • Utilises a comparative approach, taking the current situation in Germany and the UK as two key cases in comparative political economy
  • Proposes that the study of employment based welfare is placed at the core of analyses of welfare societies
  • Demonstrates the roles employee welfare can play for companies and workers, and how it has changed throughout modern history

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Welfare Beyond the Welfare State. The Employment Relationship in Germany and the UK

    • Felix Behling
    Pages 1-29

  3. A Blueprint for Mass-Employment in the Period of Industrialisation

    • Felix Behling
    Pages 31-61

  4. Building the Welfare State in the Nineteenth Century

    • Felix Behling
    Pages 63-84

  5. Employee Welfare in the Shadow of the Post-war Welfare State

    • Felix Behling
    Pages 85-115

  6. The Heyday of Welfare States—A Window of Opportunity

    • Felix Behling
    Pages 117-143

  7. Socially (Ir)responsible Companies in the Twenty-First Century

    • Felix Behling
    Pages 145-173

  8. The Welfare State and Post-Industrial Labour Markets

    • Felix Behling
    Pages 175-203

  9. A Long Way Ahead to a Long Way Ahead: Employee Welfare and Women

    • Felix Behling
    Pages 205-234

  10. Trade Unions and the Challenge of Employee Welfare

    • Felix Behling
    Pages 235-261

  11. Conclusion

    • Felix Behling
    Pages 263-290

  12. Back Matter

    Pages 291-295
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Keywords

About this book

This book examines employee welfare in British and German companies from the 19th century through to the present day. Tracing the history of employee welfare, this comparative study reveals new issues beyond the dominant focus on the welfare state, showing that companies are an integral part of welfare systems with surprisingly few differences between the UK and Germany. Maintaining that employee welfare is a key feature of the modern employment relationship, Behling shows how the welfare programme supported industrialisation in the 19th century by cementing the standard employment model of the Fifties and Sixties, as well as how it revolves around corporate social responsibility today. The result is an innovative exploration into the changing nature of employment relationships, contemporary welfare systems, and the co-evolutionary - rather than categorical - development of economic and political institutions. An engaging  and well-researched text, this book will hold special appeal to scholars of social policy, welfare politics, as well as anyone interested in the role of the state in people’s working lives.

Reviews

“What makes this book unique in comparison to other books on the welfare topic is that it takes the employment relationship as the base and employers, especially the founders of the business, as the main actors, rather than, as found in traditional works, identifying the ‘state as the main actor alongside a few other institutional organisations’ … .” (Abhishek, European Journal of Social Security, Vol. 22 (1), 2020)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Sociological Research Institute (SOFI), Göttingen, Germany

    Felix Behling

About the author

Felix Behling is a senior researcher at the Sociological Research Institute Göttingen (SOFI), Germany. He is co-editor of The Changing Worlds and Workplaces of Capitalism (Palgrave, 2015).

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