Capturing institutional logics : a cross-sectional analysis of industrial relations and human resource management in Austrian higher education study courses

Since the 1980s Industrial Relations (IR) have lost significance in Europe. The decline in labour relations was accompanied by the emergence of a new approach to personnel work, known as Human Resource Management (HRM). Initially, Austria was less affected by this development. One reason for this is the unique form of Austrias social partnership, which is strongly rooted in IR. In the long term, however, Austrias social partnership has also become less important. The problem is that downsizing the social partnership results in various drawbacks for employees. A way to measure this development is to examine the higher education system for the institutionalization of IR and HRM. Students with a strong focus on one paradigm will likely apply this paradigm in practice and strengthen its dominance. This work collected and analyzed 1011 courses from the study year 2016/2017 from 11 public universities and 16 universities of applied sciences using web retrieval. Prior the analysis, two ideal types of IR and HRM were established. All courses were then assigned to one of these two ideal types or a hybrid form on the basis of a content analysis. Additionally, individual and structural factors of courses and their lecturers were taken into account in a correspondence analysis to find factors associated with the paradigms. The results show that HRM is strongly anchored in university teaching in Austria. Although IR is still well represented at public universities, the more recent paradigm HRM dominates universities of applied sciences. The social partnership system is hardly taught either in IR or in HRM. While courses and lecturers in HRM show a strong economic and psychological orientation, IR is dominated by law. This was confirmed by both, the content and the correspondence analysis. This status of personnel work in Austrian higher education study courses forms the basis for further research. The most interesting yet open aspect is the proof of a connection between personnel work in teaching and the effects on practice, especially with regard to the social partnership.submitted by Lisa Maria Marchl, BA, Bakk.phil.Universität Innsbruck, Masterarbeit, 2017(VLID)231872