Study title

An important trend in the social structural changes in recent years is that ownership in Norwegian industry has strengthened its position, not only because the owner role has become more central, but because a traditional stakeholder tradition in important areas has been challenged by forces that want a more focused shareholder perspective, as it partly has been expressed in the new National Code of Practice for Corporate Governance. The project's main objective is to identify, analyze and explain these structural changes based on the following questions: 1) How and through what mechanisms influence the development dynamics of financial markets and the rise of corporate forms of institutions and channels of representation and articulation of worker interests in Norwegian businesses, with a particular focus on changes in the terms and basis for different employee groups' ability to promote their interests and views in decision making at various levels of operations. 2) How, and through what mechanisms national institutions are affected for cooperation and representation of interests is the development of specific corporate governance practices. 3) How and through what mechanisms, does the implementation of EU rules for consultation or representation of workers as well as guidelines for corporate governance into the sources of individual and collective employee involvement at different levels of operations. The project will build on the available empirical evidence from previous studies and apply thick case studies in strategic choice of private and publicly owned companies where there have been changes in the ownership structure and governance practices to identify and uncover mechanisms that may help explain the changes of s happened and variations of these.