Research project

Employment organisations and wage inequality: What role do companies play in generating wage inequality in Germany?

Project leader:
Prof. Dr. Martin Groß

Scientific collaborator:
Michael Schweiker, M.A.

Companies play a central role in creating inequality in the labour market. A company can be seen as an arena in which numerous actors (employers, employees, departments, professional associations, works and personnel councils, trade unions) compete for the distribution of resources. It thus offers a specific opportunity structure that determines individual success on the labour market (income, status, etc.).

With this organisational perspective on wage inequality in Germany, a number of research questions can be reworked:

• Why has wage inequality risen sharply in Germany since the early 1990s? Are there changes in company opportunity structures and practices that can explain this change?
• How is wage inequality generated locally in the company? Why do men generally earn more than women? Why do managers earn so much more in one company than in another?
• Which company environmental conditions (collective agreements, product and labour market situation) modify the role of companies in wage inequality?

Such analyses place high demands on the data material, as two levels of analysis must always be considered simultaneously: Employees and organisations. Only more recently has research on so-called linked employer-employee data sets become available, which make it possible to answer such questions by providing information on employees and their respective employers. With the Structure of Earnings Survey (VSE) and the IAB data (LIAB) we have the two central data sources for Germany.

Please contact us for further information:

Michael Schweiker, M.A.
Phone: 0049 7071 29 74348
E-Mail: michael.schweikerspam prevention@uni-tuebingen.de