Redundancy announcements and their consequences in the MNC context
Supervisor: Ola Bergström
Master Degree Project No. 2016:104 Graduate School
Master Degree Project in Management
Performativity of Announcing
Cemil Eren Fırtın
Master of Science in Management, Graduate School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg
Announcing the redundancies is a common managerial practice of the Multinational Corporations (MNCs). While too much emphasis is placed on the financial consequences of redundancy announcements in previous research; however, little attention is paid to show diverse consequences of the announcements in the cross-border context. This study mitigates these shortcomings by illustrating how the announcements may have different meanings and performative consequences in the diverse institutional contexts of the MNC. Having presented the institutional settings which shape the redundancy announcements, the study investigates the cross-border announcements across the European Union (EU) gathered from secondary sources of European Restructuring Monitor (ERM) database and illustrates the different ways how MNCs announce the redundancies. By showing the performative aspect of announcements as speech-acts, the study illustrates different meanings and consequences in different institutional contexts of the MNC. The redundancy announcements; thus, are found as one MNC practice which is both shaped by the institutional settings, but also which has the potential to shape institutions. Finally, the results indicate that by announcing the redundancies, MNC impacts the actors located in the different institutional settings by speech-acts, which in return fosters its agency to shape the institutions.
Redundancy Announcements, Multinational Corporation, Speech-Act Theory, Neo- institutionalism, Agency
Shortly after the announcement of a global restructuring plan involving 2,900 redundancies by the
management of Air France-KLM on October 2015, the reaction of the workers was far beyond
expectations; they broke into the board meeting at Charles de Gaulle airport and forced executives
to flee, with one executive clambering over fence half-naked (Willsher, 2015). The lack of security
in the meeting room, perhaps, shows that the executives were not expecting such a violent reaction
against the restructuring. More interestingly, such an unofficial wildcat action may also show that
the announcement exceeded the expectations of the workers since a quick official industrial action
was lacking (Blazejewski, 2009). Drawing upon such differences in the role of announcement from
the executives' and workers' sides, there may be many different consequences of the redundancy announcements on the relevant parties beyond the expectations.
The redundancy announcements have been widely studied in the last two decades.
However, little attention is given on such different consequences of the announcements on the relevant actors. The previous studies mainly concern with the consequences of the redundancy announcements on one aspect of the organization. In this respect, these studies can roughly be grouped per their focus on either firm reputation (Flanagan & O'Shaughnessy, 2005; Goins &
Gruca, 2008), corporate governance such as board structure (Yawson 2006) or market value of the firm (Blackwell et al., 1990; Gunderson et al., 1997). Among these studies; however, tremendous interest is given on the consequences of the announcements on the stock price reactions and financial performance of the firm. For example, Palmon et al. (1997) point out that future performance measures are associated with the reasons stated in layoff announcements since the investors consider them as effective cost-reduction tools signaling the future performance.
Likewise, Chalos & Chen (2002) found that the market selectively reacts to downsizing announcements and the redundancy announcements related to the changes in the strategic plan of the firm are positively related with market returns. On the other hand, some studies show that the redundancy announcements are negatively related with shareholder returns wherein the reason of the restructuring determines the magnitude of such correlation (Blackwell et al., 1990; Abraham, 2004). Additionally, there are studies investigating the effect of the announcements on the market reactions either in terms of inter-industry differences within financial sector (Cagle et al., 2009);
in the face of redundancy announcements of unionized or non-unionized workers (Abraham, 2006); concerning timing of the announcement (Chan-Lau, 2002; Farber & Hallock, 2009), or the reasons of the restructuring (Kalra et al., 1994; Capelle-Blancard & Tatu, 2012). Collett (2002), for instance, explores the impact of the announcements to stock exchange reactions and found that the size of the employment effect in the announcements plays a significant role. Depending on their areas of primary concern, these studies present significant differences in their findings. Some studies show that the redundancy announcements are either positively (Kalra et al., 1994) or negatively (Farber & Hallock, 2009) related to the stock returns due to the reason for restructuring stated in the announcements. However, despite such differences, the overall focus in the previous studies is limited to present only one specific consequence of the announcements; the financial performance.
Such a focus in the literature may not be surprising for Styhre (2015) since the managerial practices have increasingly become more financial-performance oriented and organizational roles have been redefined on the basis of the capital markets activities due to the socio-economic and cultural shift by the early 1980's. As the companies have been redefined as a portfolio of financial resources and legal contracts and the society has been portrayed as the collective of individual enterprising subjects (Styhre, 2015), it may not be a coincidence that the previous research focuses on the financial consequences of the announcements, especially before the financial crisis in 2008.
However, the redundancy announcements may become more problematic and have complex
consequences, not only limited to their effects on stock prices. In this respect, this study approaches
the redundancy announcements from a different perspective such that the focus will be given on the performative aspect of the announcements by investigating the possible consequences of them in different contexts.
Moreover, there is a considerable lack of studies considering the multi-national aspect of the announcements in the literature. The majority of the studies focus on the announcements either on the basis of a given firm, or only in one national context. Although Capelle-Blancard & Tatu (2012) and Collett (2002) consider the announcements in an international context, they do not specifically look from a multi-locational context; in other words, the announcements stating the cross-border redundancy effects. The cross-border aspect of the announcements may provide more opportunities to observe different consequences due to their involvement in different contexts.
Moreover, a specific look at the cross-border announcements may inherently bring about an investigation of the different contexts in which the MNCs operate. An investigation of the redundancy announcements in the MNC context is underrepresented in the previous studies. In this respect, such a focus may consequently constitute an interesting opportunity to understand the MNC context as well. To study the cross-border redundancy announcements may inherently necessitate us to look at very diverse settings. In this respect, it is relevant to understand these contexts as the different institutions in which the MNC operates (Kostova, Roth & Dacin, 2008).
Due to these different institutional contexts, the MNC brings about challenges to the deterministic understanding of the institutions as shaping the firm. Contrarily, the diverse institutional contexts may give the MNC an opportunity to shape the institutions with its agency (Kostova, Roth &
Dacin, 2008). With a look at the redundancy announcements as speech acts having performative effects (Austin, 1962), it becomes relevant to make connections with the agency of MNC and the consequences of announcements on the different contexts. Therefore, the redundancy announcements may represent a managerial practice of MNC which is both shaped by the institutional settings, but also which have a potential to shape the institutions.
In this respect, the aim of this study is to investigate how the MNC shapes institutions through redundancy announcements. Hence such an investigation may necessitate us to investigate further on the announcements, this study will also aim to answer how the MNC announces redundancies and what characterizes them. As a third aim, the study will inquire the performative effects and consequences of the redundancy announcements in different institutional contexts.
For investigating the possible answer to these aims, this article will firstly provide
theoretical discussions concerning the institutional influences on the behavior of the MNC as well
as the performative utterances in speech-act theory. Subsequently, an overview of the legal settings
concerning the redundancy announcements will be presented. In the next section, the methodology
used to collect, analyze and interpret the data as well as the potential risks and limitations
concerning these methods will be presented. Thirdly, the findings on the different ways how the
MNCs announce the redundancies and the patterns of these differences under particular groupings
will be provided. In the following section, the findings will be discussed in accordance within the
conceptual contexts presented in the theoretical framework. Finally, the conclusions and
implications of the study will be presented.
Theoretical Framework
Neo-Institutional Theory and the MNC
The understanding that organizations are shaped by the institutional context in which they are located is the common notion of the neo-institutional approach (Morgan & Kristensen, 2006). In order to review briefly, the premises of the neo-institutionalism could be grouped under the organizational field, isomorphism and legitimacy discussions. Meyer and Rowan (1977) argue that the compliance to the institutional expectations deriving from the environment settings is significant for the survival of the organizations, which in return gives the organizations legitimacy in their organizational fields (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). The compliance to the institutional environment brings about another state called as isomorphism, in which the structures, members and functions of the organizations become similar and tend to follow same patterns in their actions.
(Meyer & Rowan, 1977). Consequently, the survival of an organization is; therefore, considered within the terms of achieving legitimacy, stemming from the meeting the expectancies in the environment and compliance to the isomorphic pressures within the organizational field (Meyer
& Rowan, 1977; DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). The institutional context and its relationship with the organization; therefore, is the basis of the institutionalist discussions in studies of MNCs.
When looking at the MNC from an institutionalist perspective, there can be found remarkable varieties of approaches in the studies which locate the MNC as the unit of analysis.
These studies can roughly be positioned in two major strands (Geppert, el al., 2006, Morgan &
Kristensen, 2006; Tempel & Walgenbach, 2007). On the first strand, there are approaches which
emphasize the varieties within the different national institutional contexts as well as the
complementary social institutions and seek to observe the behavior of MNC to respond these
institutional variations in terms of transferring its organizational structure, practices and processes
from home country to the host country context (Whitley, 1999; Hall & Soskice, 2001). For the fact
that the significance is given on the business system in the country of origin in explaining the
behavior of the MNC; it would be expected that the MNC would announce the restructuring in the
way that it is shaped by the home country institutions or adopt the same behavior to the host
country. On the other strand, there are approaches derived from the application of the neo-
institutionalism within the multinational context, where the MNC is portrayed to be under the
pressure of contradictory institutional duality, in which the legitimacy is in question either within
the institutional context of the home, or either the host country (Kostova, 1999; Kostova & Zaheer,
1999; Kostova & Roth, 2002). In this respect, since the MNC is under the isomorphic pressures of
home and host countries, MNC would prefer to diffuse its organizational structures, managerial
and business practices globally (Tempel & Walgenbach, 2007). The importance is given on the
impact of host country institutions in such an understanding; and hence, from this perspective, the
MNC would be expected to announce the restructuring in the way that it's shaped by the host
country institutions. On the other hand, there are some studies stating that MNC may also want to
put pressure on both home and host contexts to be able to get better conditions. Therefore, besides
these two major strands, there are also relatively new institutional perspectives which look at the
MNC as not only being institutionally bounded on home and host contexts, but also as an agent
capable of shaping the institutional environment (Djelic & Quack, 2003; Kostova, Roth & Dacin, 2008). Having been briefly explained, the aforementioned institutional discussions will be further elaborated respectively.
The first set of the institutionalist approaches emphasizing the differences in the national business systems, despite the significant variations within, share the common notion that apart from the institutional settings of the MNC, society functions as a set of complementary institutions which shape how the firms evolve (Morgan & Kristensen, 2006). Hence, to start with the business systems approach (Whitley, 1999), the importance is given on the social factors which shape complementary institutions binding the organizations. Whitley (1999) firstly starts with a critic to the neo-institutional understanding of isomorphism since he argues that the variations in the economic systems will continue to be (re)produced by the different institutional settings at national level. The nation state in the business systems approach is defined as the key actor because of its ability to determine the effectiveness and role of the institutions (Tempel & Walgenbach, 2007).
Based on this understanding Whitley (1999) draws ideal types of business systems in terms of the extent and scope of shareholders' direct involvement in the managerial issues (ownership versus non-ownership coordination), the employment relations and work organization (the employee participation and representation system, trust delegated by the management to the workforce). The institutional context within business systems are basically grouped into four main arenas, which are the nation state, financial system, skill development and control system as well as the practices on the trust and authority relations (Whitley, 1999). Based on Whitley's (1999) arguments, there are made further studies categorizing the capitalist economies, such as dichotomous liberal market economies and coordinated market economies (Hall & Soskice, 2001); diversified, but not dichotomous market based, social democrat, continental European, Mediterranean and Asian capitalist models (Amable, 2003); or clusters of countries labelled as market-based, social democratic and hybrid economies (Pulignano, 2011) with respect to the differences in national labor markets and employment systems. To reflect on the MNC context, it suffices to state that this approach perceives the MNC as building its own practices and subsidiaries reflecting the organizational forms of their home country and; therefore, MNC tends to look for institutional contexts either where its practices already fit or where the institutional constrains are weak enabling the firm to reproduce its home model (Morgan & Kristensen, 2006). In this respect, the way how the redundancy announcements are made would be shaped by the business system of the home country, or by the home country institutions.
The subsequent set of approaches focus on the settings of organizational fields and the
legitimation processes. In this respect, when reflecting the neo-institutional understanding in the
multinational context; Kostova and Zaheer (1999) state that there are more complexities in MNC
case compared to the domestic firms. In this respect, since the MNC operates with its foreign
subsidiaries, there are multiple legitimating sources in the different environments as well as within
the organization itself. Therefore, the MNC brings a challenge to the underlying assumptions of
neo-institutionalism in terms of the legitimating environment, the organizational context and the
process of legitimation (Kostova & Zaheer, 1999). Due to these complexities, the MNC faces two
differentiated isomorphic pressures; from the institutional settings of the host country in which the MNC operates through its subsidiaries and the relational context within the MNC (Kostova &
Roth, 2002). Hence, the MNC is under the pressure to adopt local practices and become isomorphic in the local institutional setting, while at the same time, it's also under the pressure to utilize its organizational capabilities, structures and practices throughout the whole organization on the global basis (Kostova & Roth, 2002). Consequently, such an institutional duality plays a significant role in the transnational transfer of the business practices of the MNC (Kostova, 1999), which can be reflected in the case of redundancy announcement as well. Rosenzweig and Nohria (1994), for example, show that the MNC is composed of differentiated practices due to such dualities and the human resource practices, in particular, are shaped by the local isomorphic pressures in the host countries. In this respect, giving credible focus on the different institutional settings, the neo-institutional understanding would expect a global diffusion of the business practices due to the isomorphic pressures (Tempel & Walgenbach, 2007); and the legitimacy would be sought within the MNC as the whole organization as well as within the different host countries in which the subsidiaries operate (Kostova & Zaheer, 1999). Therefore, the redundancy announcement would be expected to be shaped by the institutional settings within the host countries.
Towards a New Perspective
The MNC case brings challenges to the neo-institutional approaches insofar as the early neo- institutional premises are conceptualized by a perspective from the domestic firms operating in national settings and thus they have limited application in the MNC context (Geppert, el al., 2006;
Kostova, Roth & Dacin, 2008). Since MNC is as an organization which is different from domestic firms in degree as well as in kind, it has heterogeneous, complex and diverse environments compared to the domestic firm (Kostova, Roth & Dacin, 2008). The multiple, fragmented, nested, multilayered organizational field of MNC contains conflicting institutional environments. Coupled by spatial, language, cultural and organizational barriers, making clear definitions of common domains and patterns becomes difficult compared with the domestic firms. Kostova, Roth and Dacin (2008) explain that the organizational field of the MNC is composed of three layers; the meta-institutional field, intra-organizational institutional environment as well as the meso- institutional context. The meta-institutional field is the domain in which MNC as a specific type of organization forms its own field across countries and industries, disconnected from the national institutional systems and in which the MNC belongs to sui generis institutional field that operates according to particular rules, norms and logic. The intra-organizational environment, on the other hand, is the domain in which the focus is given internally within MNC and its subsidiary and subunits embodied with set of regulations, cognitive structures and norms that provide a sense of direction, certainty and legitimacy within the intra-organizational context. The meso-institutional context includes the national institutional settings, which is the relationships of the MNC with the home and host country institutions.
Stemming from the distinction of the organizational field in the multinational case, the neo-
institutional understanding of isomorphism and decoupling may not be applicable to the MNC case
as well. Hence, MNC enjoys institutional freedom to a certain extent due to multitude of diverse practices and patterns of activity in the multinational level as well as having alternative sources compared to domestic firms (Kostova, Roth & Dacin, 2008). Therefore, instead of isomorphic pressures to comply with, MNC has the opportunity to choose between the possible diverse practices in its operations. The legitimacy, on the contrary, is relevant and significant for MNC in order to be accepted as a foreign actor to act in the local contexts. Though the legitimacy in MNC case does not derive from the isomorphic compliance to the national institutional contexts due to differentiated expectations from different environments; however, the legitimacy is rather sought through the negotiations, political processes and exchanges (Kostova, Roth & Dacin, 2008). The MNC, hence has the resources and power for negotiations and execution of micro-political processes to manipulate the institutional context (Djelic & Quack, 2003). Becker-Ritterspach and Dörrenbächer (2011), for example, present such micro-political processes in terms of intra-firm competition among the subsidiaries vis-à-vis the headquarters. The importance is given on balance between the structural determinism of the institutions on the actors and behavioral voluntarism of actors as agents to shape such institutional settings (Becker-Ritterspach & Dörrenbächer, 2011).
In short, it suffices to state that together with the institutional freedom and negotiations, MNC has the opportunity and capability to have an agency role in order to shape its environment; either in terms of choosing the institutional settings to comply with, and/or either manipulating, negotiating and partially constructing its environment (Kostova, Roth & Dacin, 2008). In this respect, the performativity of redundancy announcements may be studied in terms of the political processes and negotiations within which the MNC has agency to shape the home and host institutional contexts.
Introducing the Settings of the Restructuring Announcements
The redundancy announcements are bounded by various legal settings. Although there are international, European as well as national rules and regulations concerning the notice of collective redundancies, there are no legal requirements concerning the announcements on cross-border restructurings.
The primary legal setting concerning the redundancy announcements is International
Labour Organization (ILO)'s convention No. 158. on the termination of employment at the
initiative of the employer. According to convention, it is required from the companies to notify the
workers' representatives and public authorities in good time before implementation of collective
redundancies due to restructurings caused by the reasons of economic, technological, structural or
similar grounds (ILO, 1982). The notification includes relevant information about the reasons for
termination, number and categories of affected workers. Although, the convention sets the basic
legal setting for the collective redundancy announcements, the procedures regarding the
notifications are left to the national laws and practices. It is only required from the employer to
provide the aforementioned relevant information to the workers' representatives and national
competent authorities as early as possible (ILO, 1982). The aim of the convention is; therefore, to
maintain a space for consultation with the workers' representatives to minimize the negative
effects of the collective redundancies as well as informing the national public bodies of
employment for mitigating the projected unemployment consequences. It's also important to note that among the EU member states, only Republic of Cyprus, Finland, France, Latvia, Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden have ratified the convention. Therefore, it's binding for the MNCs operating in these signatory countries to provide information about collective redundancies to the workers' representatives and public employment/competent authorities in good time before the implementation of the restructuring.
Likewise, OECD's (2011) declaration of non-binding guidelines concerning international investment and multinational enterprises shares the similar notion of ILO Convention No. 158.
According to OECD (2011), the MNCs are recommended to notify the representatives of workers and relevant government authorities about the restructurings with collective redundancy effects in good time and with accordance to the national laws and practices. The purpose with early notification of restructuring is to create opportunity for cooperation between the MNC and relevant actors to minimize the negative effects of the collective redundancies (OECD, 2011). Since the regulations vary according to national legal settings, such cooperation is not expected to be identical in all relevant subsidiaries in different countries which are due to restructuring.
Within the EU context, the member states' national legislations and regulations have the predominant role in shaping how the redundancy announcements should be made. However, the European Directive No. 98/59/EC (with further developments in two previous directives of 92/56/EEC and 75/125/EEC) on the approximation of the laws of the Member States relating to collective redundancies serves as a basis to coordinate the national differences in regulations concerning the collective redundancies. In this respect, it's required from the employer to provide workers' representatives with relevant information in good time to notify them in writing, the reasons for the redundancies; the period during which the redundancies will be made; the number and categories of workers normally employed; the number and categories of workers to be made redundant; the criteria used to select those workers to be made redundant; and if applicable, the method used to calculate compensation (Directive, 1998). By the provision of this directive, the employer is also required to notify the competent public authority in writing of any projected collective redundancies except of the method used to calculate compensation (Directive, 1998).
Therefore, it's required that the collective redundancies cannot take effect earlier than 30 days after this notification to the public authorities. In short, the directive aims to create an opportunity for cooperation of the employer and workers' representatives in good time to reach an agreement concerning the possibility of avoidance or reduction of the redundancies to mitigate their adverse consequences in the society and anticipating the change (Directive, 1998).
The aforementioned settings are related to the collective redundancies in individual state
level. In this sense, when examining the institutional settings of cross-border restructuring within
EU, the European Works Councils (EWC) come into question as an institutional setting. The EWC
has established by Directive No. 94/45/CE (further developed by Directives No. 97/74/CE and
2007/14/CE) which applies to the companies employing one thousand or more workers with at
least 150 employees in each of two or more member states (Directive, 1994). The aim of EWC is
to bring workers' representatives from all EU countries where MNC operates together with the
management in order to receive information and give their opinions about the strategies and decisions affecting the organization and its workforce (Directive, 1994). In this respect, EWCs are considered to be a relevant actor which affect the shaping of the redundancy announcements.
While some of the previous studies on EWCs have a positive attitude about their roles in the international industrial relations as they foster transnational solidarity (Arrowsmith &
Marginson, 2006; Da Costa & Rehfeldt, 2007; Bernaciak, 2010), on the other hand, there are also views that the EWCs foster the competitive regime industry as they are used as a means for local interests by the local workers' representative bodies causing fragmented competitive solidarity which in return promote the regime competition between the host countries (Hancké, 2000;
Streeck, 2000; Banyuls et al., 2008). Regardless of their consequences on fostering transnational solidarity or fragmented competitive solidarity, Arrowsmith and Marginson (2006) draws two important roles of the EWCs: Firstly, they are effective in establishing key principles and parameters for national and local company negotiations; and secondly, in the collection and dissemination of information on cross-border working conditions and employment practices, which can be in local negotiations. In this respect, EWCs as a transnational platform for negotiations between the national and the European level (Da Costa & Rehfeldt, 2007) can be considered as a significant part of the institutional setting in which the cross-border redundancy announcements are shaped.
These legal settings are; therefore, influential in shaping how the MNC makes the redundancy announcements. Although there are no legal requirements concerning the notification of the multi-locational restructurings, some MNCs announce their cross-border redundancies and they do it in different ways. The announcements, coupled by such differences, may have different meanings by the constituents' interpretations; and consequently different outcomes. Such different consequences may show us that MNC affects the actors by the announcements. Announcements are; hence, performative and have more meanings than being statements only. In this respect, the announcement of redundancies can represent one MNC practice which is both shaped by institutions, but also which has the potential to shape institutions. Therefore, analyzing MNC announcement of redundancies as speech acts and investigating their performativity in different settings constitute relevance for understanding how the MNC shapes its institutional surrounding.
Speech Act Theory
The redundancy announcements are statements which have consequences on the relevant actors.
Beyond than just being statements, they are performative (Guild, 2002). The announcements;
therefore, not only inform or transmit redundancy messages to the relevant parties; but also
produce certain effects on the different contexts. Hence, analyzing the layoff announcements from
the perspective of different contexts may bring us to have a look at the speech act theory in order
to understand the possible consequences of announcements in these settings. The speech act theory
takes its roots from Austin (1962) which is developed as a reaction to the predominant approaches
treating the language as a fixed system with rules. Austin (1962) argues that such an approach to
the language as a fixed system to transmit messages may disregard the performative functions of
the statements. The language, words, utterances in the speech may not only describe or report the
facts; but they may also have performative functions and may themselves become the part of acting. For example, utterances such as a bet or promise may have different performativities such as ordering or threatening in certain conditions. However, this does not necessarily mean that every utterance is performative neither. In this respect, Austin (1962) firstly makes a distinction between performative and constantive utterances and argue that language is not limited to informing, describing or explaining the statements in a constantive way; however, they may be performative.
This can be illustrated as: "I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow" or "I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth!" (Austin, 1962, p. 5). The language, in such cases, becomes something performative:
saying that "it will rain tomorrow and that I bet for it" or "I name this ship" is not describing what I am doing, but it is the utterance itself that is performing the act. In the case of redundancies, as Guild (2002) points out, there takes place many rhetorical battles with consequences to the relevant actors using their most legitimate linguistic weapons. The language; therefore, has a central position when announcing a layoff. In this respect, the redundancy announcements can be considered as performative utterances, since the announcements not only inform or describe the restructuring in a constantive way; but they also perform the layoffs by announcing in certain ways.
On the performativity of the utterances, Austin (1962) distinguishes three categories;
locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. Locution is the conventional meaning and
"saying something in the full normal sense" (p. 94). Since the locution is the normal meaning of the utterance, it may not necessarily constitute speech acts in every case. Illocution, on the other hand, is the intention of what is meant by using the words, in other words, "doing something in saying something" (p. 108). Examples of illocution can thus be given as posing a question, a request, warning, an order or threat. Perlocution, on the contrary, is "doing something by saying something" (p. 109) which is the consequent impact of the illocution, dependent but external to the illocutionary act such as persuasion, convincement or deterrence. These three performatives may be illustrated as follows:
Locutionary Act: He said to me to shoot her!-meaning by shoot to shoot and by her to her.
Illocutionary Act: Her urged (or advised, ordered, etc.) me to shoot her.
Perlocutionary Act: He persuaded me to shoot her or He got me to (or made me) shoot her. (Austin, 1962, p. 101-102)
These three acts are usually performed at the same time; starting from the normal meaning of the utterance to the consequent but external act of the utterance by the speaker to the listener or reader (Austin, 1962). In this respect, by announcing redundancies, MNC basically communicates some meanings to the relevant constituents located in different contexts. Regardless of the differences in how it is announced, the announcement's locutionary act is that "I will fire". Therefore, they have in common as being directed from the MNC to the different contexts in which it operates by pointing to a time interval in the future. The differences in announcements; however, either based on specification of the addressee, reason, location, scale and/or scope of the restructuring, may consequently have different performativities since such differences may affect the interpretations in different contexts.
Furthermore, Austin (1962) states that there are certain conditions for an utterance to be
performative, which he calls as felicity conditions: There shall be a conventional procedure having a conventional effect; the persons and circumstances in a context shall be appropriate in a given case which is specified in the procedure; and the procedure must be executed correctly and completely. This is to say that in order to be performative, there should be relevant parties in relevant contextual situations. To illustrate, uttering "I sentence you imprisonment" needs relevant parties and contextual surroundings in order to be performative: a judge, a defendant and perhaps a courtroom. Austin (1962) argues that in case that such contextual conditions are not satisfied, the utterance would be infelicitous and performativity would be void. Additionally, the different contextual settings shape the performative utterance in different ways (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969).
The application of the speech act theory within the context of redundancy announcements may;
therefore, require us to look into the contextual conditions in which the announcements are made.
As Guild (2002) indicates, the significant contextual factors giving meanings to the speech acts have left unspecified by the theoretical model. These contextual conditions remind us the institutional settings in which the organizations make the redundancy announcements. Hence, with the help of an institutionalist perspective, the institutions may fill the gap for the contextual conditions in order to draw conclusions about how the redundancy announcements have impact on the actors in different contexts through the speech acts.
The Design of the Study and Data Collection
Since the study aims to provide a framework for understanding how the MNC shapes the institutions, the redundancy announcements have been collected as the object of inquiry. For this aim, the study is based on secondary sources gathered from the European Restructuring Monitor (ERM) database which is analyzed qualitatively. The database, including large set of information over years and in dispersed geographic locations all over the EU, has been generated as a result of the most comprehensive studies on restructurings conducted by the European Monitoring Centre on Change (EMCC) (Bergström, 2014; Eurofound, 2016/a). EMCC is an information resource promoting an understanding of changes in the work life, employment and restructuring, established in 2001 within the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions and supported by European Parliament, the European Commission and the social partners (Eurofound, 2016/a). The data about the restructurings within the EU over the years have been gathered by the EMCC and collected under the ERM database.
The ERM database is composed of the media reports, press releases and media coverage
regarding the restructurings in each EU member state since 2001 and onwards. It contains
information on the cases of organizational restructurings in all industries in EU, including public
and private sectors. The restructuring events comprise bankruptcy, closure, business expansion,
offshoring/outsourcing/relocations, internal restructurings as well as merger and acquisitions. The
database provides information about the restructurings concerning the job creations and/or
redundancies effects, locations of the affected regions, countries and/or plants and date of the
announcements. Since the content of the ERM database is specifically on the restructurings and
job creation and/or redundancy effects, it's considered to be useful to make use of the database in
the collection of data for finding relevant field material for the purpose of this study. Additionally, as Bergström (2014) points out, it's interesting to note that even though reporting the announcements concerning redundancies to the national/local authorities is a legal requirement in the EU, there is no available European body to coordinate to collect data of announced and implemented redundancy. Therefore, the ERM database is the one of the few reliable sources of information to gather information on the collective redundancies across Europe (Bergström, 2014).
Limitations and Risks
While on one hand the ERM database contains the most comprehensive set of information on the organizational restructurings (Bergström, 2014), on the other hand, it is important to state that there are certain limitations and risks concerning the content and the formation of this dataset.
Hence, the first risk of the ERM database is related to the formation of the database. The database includes the restructuring events which have employment and/or redundancy effect over 100 employees or employment effects affecting at least 10% of a workforce of more than 250 people (Eurofound, 2016/b). While the database does not include the restructurings which have job loss/creation effect under 100 employees, this risk is minimized as focusing on the restructurings with collective redundancy effects for the aim of this study, in other words with effects over 1000 employees.
Furthermore, the aforementioned risk may bring about further related risks in terms of company size bias (Storrie, 2006). Since the database is composed of the restructurings with a selected threshold, it is biased to include more announcements from the side of the companies with larger sizes. Storrie (2006) goes further in his reflections that the company size bias may bring about other biases firstly related to the industry, such as the manufacturing in which there are companies with larger sizes in comparison to companies within service sector, and secondly concerning the region, where the impact of the large company bias will be on the small states since there are fewer larger companies in size in order to exceed the ERM thresholds. As a result, the ERM provides more restructuring announcements from the larger companies and larger states as there is limited information on the smaller countries and companies (Storrie, 2006). However, since the aim of this study is understanding how the MNC shapes the institutions by announcing the redundancies, the focus is given on the restructuring events with larger and cross-border redundancy effects. Therefore, while it's important to keep in mind the larger company size biased formation of the ERM, it's sufficient to state that this bias does not exhibit obstacle; contrarily functions relevant for this study.
Moreover, since the database is composed of the press reports, there is risk that all restructuring events may not be reported in the public media. Therefore, the database is limited in the respect that it only includes the announcements which are covered in the media. On the other hand, the database makes use of different press sources concerning one particular restructuring event, which may have a positive impact on the trustworthiness and verification of the data.
Lastly, for the fact that the ERM database presents the planned redundancies which are
announced to the media, it can be important to keep in mind that there may be possible changes in
the actual implementation of the restructuring planned concerning the numbers of employees
losing their jobs. Although the gap between the numbers of announced and implemented redundancies is a significant risk; such a risk may not be valid for an investigation of announcements as speech-acts and the agency role of MNC within the institutional contexts. This gap between the announced and actual numbers of employees affected from the implementation of the restructuring may also be an interesting point for further studies.
The analysis of data has been conducted in successive steps with the use of the grounded theory approach for continuously and comparatively analyzing the field material as the research goes on (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). The path from the empirical findings to the theoretical abstractions follow similar to the explanations of Martin and Turner (1986) on grounded theory such that the level of abstraction goes from lower to higher where consequently the empirical findings from field research are connected to higher theoretical abstractions by the discovery of concepts and the development of theoretical concept definitions. In other words, by employing this approach, the concentration was firstly given on the detailed descriptions and analysis of the collected data and the thematic categories has been used as the data was analyzed to understand the relationships between the findings and the theoretical discussions on the MNC restructuring.
The initial database of ERM has been analyzed in different steps and the data has been separated into subcategories in accordance with the purpose of the study. In each step, the size of the data has been narrowed down in a funneling manner (Table I). For the first step, the announcements mentioning one thousand and more employees were selected. In this step, the set of data in which there is no satisfactory and reliable information on the specific restructuring event were disregarded in order to minimize errors and to increase the trustworthiness of the study.
In the successive step, the announcements with job creation and/or redundancy effects were separated by a method of grouping in different color. Having marked the job creations and redundancies in different color, subsequently, only the redundancies were taken into the sample group for the aim of this study. A first screening was made by excluding the restructurings within the public services (education, health, public transportation and related utilities, military and related defense sectors) from the group to be analyzed further. However, the announcements made by the other state-owned and for-profit enterprises were taken into the group for analysis.
Total Announcements 17992
Total Redundancy Announcements 11898
Qualified Set of Redundancy Announcements 913
Cross-Border Redundancy Announcements 215
Table I-Total and Qualified Numbers of Announcements
For the next step, a deeper elimination was made based on the industry/sector. Since the focus of the study is on the cross-border redundancies, the industries in which the nature of the business is country-specific are disregarded. In this respect, industries and sectors such as, water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation activities; scientific research and development;
residential care and social work activities; agriculture, forestry and fishing; administrative and
support service activities and legal, accounting, management, architecture, engineering, technical testing and analysis activities were taken out.
Furthermore, some related industries were merged in order to make it easier for the analysis. The industries, such as manufacturing, repair and installation of machinery and equipment was merged with manufacture of machinery and equipment; manufacture of electrical equipment was merged with computer, electronic and optical products; mining and quarrying was merged with manufacture of coke, and refined petroleum products; and the transportation, tourism and storage activities were grouped together.
The announcements were analyzed in terms of organizations' ownership structures as well.
In the first phase, the companies were labelled with the country of their origins and grouped under four main locations. For the companies with the ownership of EU countries, including Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia by 2004; and Romania and Bulgaria by 2007 enlargement, were grouped under EU. Similarly, the companies with majority ownership structure originated in the US and Canada were labelled as North American. Likewise, the companies with Israeli and Saudi Arabian owners were labelled as Middle East. Lastly, the companies from China, Japan, India, South Korea, Taiwan and Australia were labeled as Asia-Pacific. The ownership structures were thought to be a meaningful tool used at the inquiry in the possible relations of redundancy announcement and the behavior of MNC.
Consequently, the announcements were further analyzed in terms of location and labelled with respect to the location within which the announcement specify the numbers of possibly affected employees either country-wise or production/service plant-wise for further discussions (Table II).
No country nor plant specified 50
All affected countries specified 56
Only home country specified, other countries not specified 33 Plant only in home country specified, other countries not specified 20 Plant only in home country specified, other countries specified 6 Plant only in one subsidiary specified, other countries specified 21
All plants specified 29
Table II-The distribution of announcements based on the specification of locations (country/plant)
Introducing the Redundancy Announcements
The redundancy announcements; despite the different underlying reasons leading to downsize, basically inform and notify the possible future layoffs. The announcements; thus, either implicitly or explicitly point to a time interval in the future when the redundancies are intended to be implemented. Additionally, by the announcements, the constituents located inside and outside of the organization are informed about the restructuring. In the MNC context, this includes the other MNCs, shareholders, or investors in general; subsidiaries; public authorities; the workers'
representatives located in the home country of the MNC as well as in the host country where it
operates. However, despite the same nature and function of the announcements, the analysis of the
data shows that there are significant differences in how the redundancies are announced. The different ways how the management announces the redundancies may have different consequences in such institutional contexts. In this respect, these differences will firstly be presented; then subsequently, the possible different meanings by such differences in the announcements will be discussed within the context of the MNC.
The Different Approaches of MNCs to Redundancies
The analysis shows that there are significant differences in the announcements in terms of the location. Some announcements specify the affected locations in details; while on the other hand, some remain very broad in terms of pointing to the affected locations. From this point of view, the analysis have brought us to three different types of announcements: Location-Concealing, Home- Prioritizing and Location-Revealing Announcements (Table III). While at first glance, these three categories may be perceived as a continuum from the least to the most location specified cases;
however, it is important to note that there are also significant variations within each category.
These variations will be further presented and illustrated case-wise. The three categories may also be regarded as different ways of choice or different approaches of the MNC when announcing restructuring. In this respect, these different approaches may have different possible meanings and consequences will subsequently be discussed from different angles within the different contexts in which the MNC operates.
Table III-Three different categories of redundancy announcements
Location-Concealing Announcements
The announcements under this category have something in common; they do not specify the location, neither country nor plant, and tend to be very general when announcing the redundancies.
An example can be given to illustrate this category:
The petrochemical group, ExxonMobil, announced a Europe-wide restructuring plan affecting 1,537 jobs. The project aims to centralize the totality of the managerial teams in a single European center,
• Neither country nor plant is specified when announcing the restructuring Location-Concealing Announcements
• The number of affected employees from redundancy is specified only in the home country
• The affected plant is specified only in home country while the other affected countries not mentioned
• Affected plant in only home country specified while the other affected countries mentioned without specifying the plant
Home-Prioritizing Announcements
• All affected countries specified by number of affected employees from redundancy
• All affected plants specified in each country
• Affected plant in only one subsidiary specified while the other affected countries mentioned without specifying the plant
Location-Revealing Announcements
which will be based in a country at reduced social cost. In Europe, the group employs directly 24,000 persons on 29 units and owns 106,000 gas stations. (ERM, 2016/a)
The announcement informs us about the prospective reason of the layoffs with its possible redundancy effect in total. However, the location which the restructuring may affect how many employees remains concealed. In this given case; the redundancies may apply to any subsidiary in Europe. Announcing the redundancies this way may communicate in different ways among the different contexts where the MNC operates. Since the location is not known to the parties; with an instant analysis, it can be interpreted as a threat from the subsidiary-side; while on the other hand, it may have other meanings in the other context. Thus, by announcing the redundancies in this way may allow the MNC to create different consequent acts in different contexts by such different interpretations.
When examining the cases further, it was found that announcements are more likely to be location-concealing when the numbers of possibly affected employees rise. The more the number of affected employees, the more likely that the announcements is location-concealing. The scale of the restructuring, therefore, was found to be an important factor in MNC's choice of adapting such an approach in its announcements. Similarly, the scope of the restructuring constitutes another important aspect why the MNC tends to announce this way. When the restructuring involves many countries, the announcements tend to be more general such as mentioning the affected locations as either worldwide, EU, or more precisely, Western and/or Eastern Europe. Therefore, similar to the scale, as the scope of the restructuring rises, the MNCs tend not to specify the locations of the redundancies neither country- nor plant-wise.
This can be explained from different angles: It can be due to the difficulties in calculations of the large numbers of employees dispersed in different locations; or it can be because of diverse legal settings within each location concerning the announcements; and hence, due to getting prepared for the future negotiation processes with the relevant actors such as public authorities, EWCs and trade unions. By specifying a larger number of affected employees in a country and/or plant may result in directing the attention of actors to one location, which the MNC may try to avoid at first hand. It may be also challenging to start negotiations in many different locations at the same time, which may explain why the MNC may choose to announce in location-concealing way. However, regardless of the reason why the MNC doesn't specify the location may have consequences on the other contexts. With location-concealing announcements, the announcement itself may act as enforcing a competition across different countries, as well as, a competition among the subsidiaries. The different interpretations by these contexts may bring about such consequences.
Moreover, when analyzing in a longitudinal way, it was observed that this type of
announcements tend to be followed by more specific announcements at a later stage. In this
respect, these announcements constitute the first set of further announcements related to a broader
bargaining process. Therefore, some of the restructuring announcements under this category
follow a similar pattern, starting the redundancy announcements from global or macro level to the
detailed and specified locations based on country or individual plant over time. This can be illustrated by the restructuring case in Renault in 2008:
[On July 2008] Renault, the French automobile manufacturer, has announced that it is to dismiss 5,000 to 6,000 persons out of 47,000 employed in Europe due to the deterioration of the macroeconomic environment. The management said that the reorganization will be implemented on a voluntary basis.
Apart Sandouville in France, the direction did not give any information concerning the sites which will be affected by the reorganization. (ERM, 2016/b)
The announcement firstly gives the total number of the employees in Europe who can be affected from the restructuring and it specifies neither countries nor plants. The plant in home country (Sandouville/France) is pointed in the announcements; however, there is no information given about the number of employees who would be made redundant. On the other hand; two months later Renault made more specific announcements:
[On September 2008] Renault has announced plans to cut 4,000 jobs [in France] … without taking account of its subsidiaries, with staff not directly involved in production … Unions at the company are hoping to secure better redundancy terms between now and the group's next central Works Council meeting, scheduled for 1 October 2008. Trade unions called employees of Renault to stage a strike on 11 September in protest against the French carmaker's plans to axe 4,000 jobs. The strike is a protest against the group's plans to cut 3,000 jobs and to eliminate an extra 1,000 at its plant in Sandouville.
(ERM, 2016/c)
This case illustrates that when the announcement became more specified, it brought about reaction from the other parties in different settings; which is the trade union in the home country as well as the EWC in this context. Therefore, it may be seen as a part of the bargaining strategy of the MNC to first start announcing on a broader level; and then at a later stage make a more specific announcement. Announcing broadly may be an initial part of the prospective negotiations where both parties may get prepared for the next step. On the other hand, as mentioned previously, following such a path in the announcements may also be due to the on-going calculations for the effect of the restructuring in every single location. However, independent of the reason why the MNCs follow such a pattern, each announcement; from the location-concealing to the location- revealing, may have different meanings; and hence different consequences on different parties.
Furthermore, on the industrial/sectoral distribution, it was found that there is an even distribution under this category, though with slightly more biased to industries of computer, electronic/electrical and optical products manufacturing and financial sectors. This means that announcing in a location-concealing way is not limited to a certain industry. This may allow us to state that the MNCs operating in various industries may broadly announce the redundancies in terms of location. In this respect, for location-concealing announcements, the industry may not constitute a specific setting for a search of different interpretations of the announcements within the MNC context.
The previous Renault case may allow us to look for the second type of the announcements.
Following the analysis, it was found that in some announcements the MNC chooses to specify the
extent of the possible redundancy effects in their home countries and/or plants in the home country,
while signaling that the restructuring is not limited to the home country and may extend to the other locations in the scale and scope. The following example illustrates this category:
On 8 July 2008, Siemens released details on its restructuring program. Siemens intends to cut 16,750 jobs worldwide. Out of these 5,250 jobs will be lost in Germany. The cutbacks will most severely affect the German sites in Erlangen (1,350) Munich (1000), Nuremberg (550) and Berlin (350). (ERM, 2016/d)
In this case, the announcement states that there will be redundancies in the home country by referring to the specific locations. On the other hand, the announcement also states that there are redundancies to be made worldwide and conceals the other locations apart of the home country.
However, the home-prioritizing characteristic of this announcement, for example, may be due to the fact that it could be based on a German newspaper. While it is important to note such handicap, such an announcement may still be interesting for having different consequences both within the organization; among the subsidiaries, as well as, in the context of the other relevant actors located in home and host countries. The different interpretations; consequently, may result in different performative consequences of such announcements in these different contexts; either this announcement may be perceived as volunteering, sacrificing or instructing for the rest of the organization in home or can be interpreted as a warning or a request by the actors in the host context. Therefore, it remains an interesting question to ask why the MNC announces this way and what it may possibly intend to perform such acts on actors by the announcements.
With a further analysis, there were found some variations within this category. Some announcements, like the case illustrated previously, specify the redundancy effect in the home country and the plant in the home country while not mentioning the other cross-border effects of the restructuring. It was observed that more than half of such announcements (53% of the cases) are made by the German MNCs. The German MNCs are inclined to specify their home country as well as the plants located in their home countries without pointing to the other affected foreign countries when announcing their restructurings. On the other hand, it was also observed that there are no examples of such announcements which are primarily from any MNC with non-European ownership structure.
Although this is to say that no non-European MNC chooses to prioritize their home country when announcing the redundancy; however, it is important to note that such finding may probably derive from the formation of the dataset since it prioritizes collection of announcements which are primarily affecting the European area. The observation on German MNCs may also be connected with the limitation of the data as well; since the database could be biased to the countries with larger population and to the companies larger in size due to media coverage. Regardless of such a bias, the question remains why the German MNCs tend to announce the redundancy effects in their home country and concealing the effects in other locations. It may either be due to legal settings in home country (although ILO's convention No. 158 has not been ratified in Germany), or basically due to the choice of prioritizing the home country effects in the home. This may explain the effect of the home country institutions in the practices of such MNCs in the other countries.
The same question may apply for the non-European MNCs as well. However, independent of the
reason why, the interesting point is the different interpretations in the different contexts of the
MNC and possible consequences of these interpretations.
Furthermore, there were also some cases in which the MNCs mention the possible effects on the other countries without giving details, but prioritizing to specify the effects in home country or home plant by their announcements. An example can be given to illustrate such cases:
Alcatel-Lucent has announced 5,490 job cuts worldwide, with a large number of job cuts being implemented in France (1430). Other EU states will see 3,300 jobs go, while 900 jobs are to be cut in the Asia-Pacific region … about 500 positions were under threat in Italy (20% of the workforce) and 10% in Belgium … cuts would mainly hit support functions such as sales, marketing, finance and human resources, located in the headquarters in Velizy (France). (ERM, 2016/e)
In this case, the announcement illustrates a restructuring related to functional reasons; where the emphasis is given on cutting the administrative functions in the home country. Such way the redundancies are announced; therefore, may be dependent on the reason for the restructuring.
Additionally, the priority may be given in the home context due to the scale of the job cuts; as illustrated in this case, where the redundancies are expected to impact mostly the home country.
Although such data may not tell us much about the reason, it may lead to question the possible consequences with these differences. In this case, for example, questioning how this announcement may be perceived by the administrative worker in France (whom the announcement directly points to), by a mid-level manager in Italy (whom the announcement indirectly point to) and by a blue- collar worker in a subsidiary in Asia-Pacific (whom the announcement mentions) and which way this announcement may be performative on these actors remain interesting.
Some MNCs do not prioritize the home country/home plant nor do they mention the redundancies in broader global level; however, they specify the numbers of threatened employees in each individual country or in each production/service plant. Such announcements can be illustrated by the following case:
Arcelor, the worldwide steel leader, announced a European restructuring plan affecting six blast furnaces in four units until 2010. The French unit (Florange), the Belgian unit (Liege) and two German units (Eisenhüttenstadt and Bremen) will be affected each by the closures of blast furnaces … The restructuring plan will not only affect 5000 jobs on the blast furnaces but also subcontractors and other linked companies and workers in the regions. (ERM, 2016/f)
The case illustrates the announcement of redundancies resulting from the closure of production plants; by revealing all the affected locations. Although, it can be said that the announcement itself is very broad; however, when compared to the cases presented in the location-concealing announcements, the announcement is specific as pointing to the specific production plants. The data does not allow us to say much about the reason why, for example, Arcelor announces redundancies such way; however, the interesting point may remain in the questioning whether there are similar or different interpretations in the subsidiaries in Florange, Liege or Bremen vis- à-vis this announcement.
Additionally, it was observed that the majority of these announcements are made by non-
European MNCs. To illustrate, fourteen out of fifteen announcements made by Asian-Pacific
MNCs fall under this category. Similarly, there are 22 out of 27 announcements in this category
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