Working Group Prof. Dr. Mense-Petermann: Sociology of Labor and Economic Sociology
Research and Teaching Unit 10: Sociology of Labor and Economic Sociology
Welcome to Prof. Dr Ursula Mense-Petermann's working group on the sociology of work and economics!
Our working group examines questions of labour and economic sociology in the context of globalisation and transnationalisation processes.
One focus is research on transnational labour mobility. In the course of new transnational organisational strategies of business organisations, there has been a significant increase in the number of employees posted abroad in recent years - especially in the area of middle management and technical experts. This cross-border labour mobility and the mobility regimes that govern it are examined in the research of the working group from the perspective of the sociology of work and world society theory.
The change of careers - also in the context of globalisation and economic transformation processes - forms a further focus.
A third focus is research on corporate globalisation. Following on from earlier, already completed research on globalisation processes, in which the development of transnational economic structures was observed above all within globally operating companies, we are currently investigating in particular the problems and specifics of the globalisation of small and medium-sized enterprises.
The labour and economic sociology research projects of our working group are largely based at the Institute for World Society Studies (IW) . Their aim is to make a "contribution to the understanding of globalisation processes and global social structures" (ibid.) within the framework of the IW's research programme.
- Forschungsprojekte
DFG Research Training Group "Cross-border Labour markets"
Spokesperson: Ursula Mense-Petermann (Bielefeld University)
Deputy Spokesperson: Prof Karen Shire, Ph.D. (University of Duisburg-Essen)Duration: 01.04.2024 - 31.03.2029
ZiF Research Group "In Search of the Global Labour Market - Actors, Structures and Policies"
Head: Ursula Mense-Petermann with Prof. Dr Thomas Welskopp and Junior Prof. Dr Anna Zaharieva
Duration: 10/2017 to 09/2018
Project description: on the website of the ZiF (Centre for Interdisciplinary Research)
Publications:
Mense-Petermann, Ursula (2020): Interest representation in transnational labour markets: Campaigning as an alternative to traditional union action? Journal of Industrial Relations, 62(2), 185-209. doi:10.1177/0022185619900642.
Mense-Petermann, Ursula (2020): Introduction to the special theme: theorizing transnational labour markets. Global Networks, 20(3): 399-409. doi:10.1111/glob.12284.
Mense-Petermann, Ursula (2020): Theorizing transnational labour markets. A research heuristic based on the new economic sociology. Global Networks, 20(3): 410-433. doi:10.1111/glob.12260.
Mense-Petermann, Ursula (2018): Eastern European Service Contract Workers in the German Meat Industry. A Case Study in Market Making of a Transnational Labour Market. ZiF-Mitteilungen,2018(2), 23-31.
"Transnational labour market in the meat industry"
Funding: own funds / ZiF
Duration: 10/2017 until 09/2018
Publications:
Mense-Petermann, Ursula (2020): Interest representation in transnational labour markets: Campaigning as an alternative to traditional union action? Journal of Industrial Relations,62(2), 185-209. doi:10.1177/0022185619900642.
Mense-Petermann, Ursula (2020): Introduction to the special theme: theorizing transnational labour markets. Global Networks, 20(3): 399-409. doi:10.1111/glob.12284.
Mense-Petermann, Ursula (2020): Theorizing transnational labour markets. A research heuristic based on the new economic sociology. Global Networks, 20(3): 410-433. doi:10.1111/glob.12260.
Mense-Petermann, Ursula (2018): Eastern European Service Contract Workers in the German Meat Industry. A Case Study in Market Making of a Transnational Labour Market. ZiF-Mitteilungen,2018(2), 23-31.
Lectures:
Mense-Petermann, Ursula: "Transnational Labour Market Meat Industry. Funktionsweise und soziale Folgen", lecture given as part of the event series "Die Vielfalt der Gesellschaft. 50 JAHRE Faculty of Sociology" as a contribution of the Department 10 Economics and Labour, Historisches Museum Bielefeld, 05.12.2019.
Ursula Mense-Petermann:"Eastern European Service Contract Workers in the German Meat Industry - Institutions, Networks and Conventions". Presentation given at the ISA World Congress, Research Committee 02: Economy and Society, 15-21 July 2018, Toronto, Canada, 18 July 2018.
Ursula Mense-Petermann:"Eastern European Service Contract Workers in the German Meat Industry - a Case Study in Market Making of a Transnational Labour Market". Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE), Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan, 23-25 June 2018.
"Chinese direct investments in Germany - strategic goals, implementation and consequences of the takeover of German companies by Chinese investors"
Funding: DFG
Duration: 01.03.2016 - 30.09.2019, extension until 31.12.2020.
Project description on the website of the Institute for World Society Studies
Publications:
Neue Westfälische 03.01.2020: Ursula Mense-Petermann in an interview on company acquisitions from China.
Mense-Petermann, Ursula (2021): Emerging Economy MNCs and their Geopolitical Embeddedness. In Mike Geppert & Ödül Özkurt (Eds.), Research Agenda in International Business Management . Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 153-171.
Mense-Petermann, Ursula (2021): Post-merger Integration and Subsidiary Roles in Chinese MNCs - The Case of Chinese M&As in Germany. critical perspectives on international business - cpoib. https://doi.org/10.1108/cpoib-02-2020-0010
Lectures:
Ursula Mense-Petermann:"Chinese Direct Investment in Germany - Chinese MNCs' Internationalisation and Dominance Patterns in Global Capitalism". Lecture given at the Annual Conference of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-economics (SASE), 27 - 29 June 2019, The New School, New York, 29 June 2019.
Junchen Yan:"Othering and Symbolic Inequality in International Mergers: Evidence from Chinese Oversea Acquisitions in Germany". Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE), Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan, 23-25 June 2018.
Christoph Seidel:"Agent Constitutions of German Companies in Chinese Acquisition Processes". Presentation given in Sub-Theme 22: "Economic and Institutional flux and the power of MNCs: towards a greater appreciation of the role of politics" at the LAMEOS Conference, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 22-24 March 2018.
"Going global" or "short-term adventure"? Interest-related political conditions and consequences of globalisation for small and medium-sized enterprises"
Project description on the website of the Institute for World Society Studies
Publications:
Meyer, Andre (2017): The internationalisation of SMEs and its consequences for the industrial social order.Industrial Relations, 24(3), 347-371.
Seidel, Christoph; Meyer, Andre (2016): 'Uncertainty-avoiding or opportunistic: internationalisation trajectories of small and medium-sized enterprises'. WSI-Mitteilungen 6/2016, pp. 426-435. Available online: http://www.boeckler.de/wsi-mitteilungen_66832_66843.htm
Lectures:
Seidel, Christoph; Meyer, Andre: "Grenzüberschreitende Zusammenarbeit in KMU: informelle innerbetriebliche Bedingungen von Offenheit und Geschlossenheit" , presentation at the ad hoc group: Problem processing and regulation in the context of cross-border work - beyond closed societies? 38th Congress of the German Sociological Association: Closed Societies, 26-30 September 2016, University of Bamberg, 30 September 2016.
Seidel, Christoph:"The social world of the firm and the internationalisation of SMEs", lecture given at the EGOS Standing Working Group (Sub-theme 38): Internationalisation of SMEs: Actors, Processes and Practices, 31st EGOS Colloquium - Organizations and the Examined Life: Reason, Reflexivity and Responsibility, 02-04.07.2015, Athens, 02.07.2015.
Mense-Petermann, Ursula: "'Going global' or 'short-term adventure'? Chancen und Risiken der Globalisierung kleiner und mittelständischer Unternehmen" , lecture given at the "3. Forum Internationalisierung" of the Netzwerk OWL Maschinenbau on the topic "Globalisierung 4.0 - Wachstumschancen und Wettbewerbsrisiken für den deutschen Maschinenbau in Asien", Gildemeister AG Bielefeld, 06.06.2013.
"The work of 'boundary spanning' and its regulation - 'Global Mobility Policies' as a mobility regime"
Publications:
Mense-Petermann, Ursula: "'Bridging the Differences' - The labour of 'boundary spanning' and its regulation in transnational companies". Presentation given in the plenary session "Diversity of cross-border working time contexts - cohesion through transnational labour regulation?" at the 36th Congress of the German Sociological Association "Diversity and Cohesion", Ruhr-University Bochum / TU Dortmund, 01-05 October 2012.
"Expatriate Managers: A New Cosmopolitan Elite? Habitus, everyday practices and networks"
Project description on the website of the Institute for World Society Studies
Publications:
Bredenkötter, Bastian (2019): Boundary work in transnational work environments: Expatriate managers as 'boundary spanners' in translocal and transcultural 'workscapes'. Labour, 28(3), 215-240. https://doi.org/10.1515/arbeit-2019-0015
Spiegel, Anna / Mense-Petermann, Ursula / Bredenkötter Bastian (2018): Expatriate Managers: The Paradoxes of Working and Living Abroad. Routledge studies in international business and the world economy. Vol 70 New York, London: Routledge.
Spiegel, Anna / Mense-Petermann, Ursula (2016): Intertwined mobilities and their management. Mobility practices of expatriate managers and their 'trailing spouses' on foreign assignments. Austrian Journal of Sociology, 41, 15-31.
Mense-Petermann, Ursula (2014): 'Bridging the Differences' - The Work of 'boundary spanning' and its Regulation in Transnational Corporations. In M. Löw (Ed.), Diversity and Cohesion. Proceedings of the 36th Congress of the German Sociological Association in Bochum and Dortmund 2012, Part 1 (pp. 297-311). Frankfurt/New York: Campus.
Park, Kathleen / Mense-Petermann, Ursula (2014): Managing across Borders - Global Integration and Knowledge Exchange in MNCS. Competition & Change, 18, June (3: Special Issue "Multinationals, social agency and institutional change: Variation by sector"), 265-279.
Lectures:
Mense-Petermann, Ursula:"Creating and Navigating Transnational - Social Spaces within Multinationals. Boundary-spanning Work and its Regulation by Globyl Mobility Policies", lecture given at the 27th SASE Annual Conference "Inequality in the 21st Century", The London School of Economics and Political Science, London, 02-04 July 2015.
Spiegel, Anna / Bredenkötter, Bastian:"Expatriate Manager zwischen Macht und Machtlosigkeit", lecture given at the spring conference "Migration und Macht. Sociological theories and empirical findings on power relations in immigration countries" of the DGS section Migration and Ethnic Minorities, 7-8 May 2015, Göttingen, 7 May 2015.
Mense-Petermann, Ursula / Spiegel, Anna: "Global mobility policies, social positioning and boundary spanning work of expatriate managers", lecture given at the EGOS Standing Working Group 11 (Sub-theme 11): What's Up in the Contemporary MNC: New Research Perspectives, 30th EGOS Colloquium, 03-05 July 2014, Rotterdam, 03 July 2014.
Mense-Petermann, Ursula: "Expatriate Managers: A New Cosmopolitan Elite?", lecture given at the workshop: Transnational Labour Markets: Bridging Different Regularory and Cultural Contexts, University of Duisburg Essen, 26 June 2014.
Mense-Petermann, Ursula: "'Tourists', 'Locals' und die Arbeit des 'boundary spanning' - Die Grenzstellenarbeit von Expatriates in transnationalen Unternehmen" , lecture given at the "Bielefelder Kolloquium zur Organisationstheorie", Bielefeld University, 10.06.2013.
Mense-Petermann, Ursula; Park, Kathleen: "Managing across Borders: The Boundary Spanning of Expatriate Managers in Multinational Companies", lecture given at the 24th SASE Annual Conference "Global Shifts: Implications for Business, Government and Labour", Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 28-30 June 2012.
Spiegel, Anna: "'Oh, they're not even awake yet'. Raum und Zeit im translokalen Arbeitsalltag deutscher Expatriate Manager in China und den USA" , lecture given in the panel 'Mobile Arbeit und mobiles Leben' in the context of the symposia "Arbeit in der Weltgesellschaft - Zur Transnationalisierung hochqualifizierter Arbeit", Bielefeld University, 26.05.2012.
Spiegel, Anna: "Belonging and Space Making Practices of German Expatriate Managers in Shanghai", lecture given on the panel 'Migration of Professionals and the City - Mobility, Locality and Identities of Expatriates and the Global Elite' at the AAG Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers 2012, New York, 28 February 2012.
- Completed research projects
Culture in transnational corporations
Project ending date: 31 July 2007
Brief description
The project is a continuation of the project "Multicultural Corporations". A further case study will be carried out in a second subsidiary of a German corporation. These two subsidiaries are to be contrasted in a multiple comparative perspective, and the surveys are to make it possible to reconstruct the different cultural configurations at the locations studied, the resulting emergent processes of transnational culturality, and finally the way in which the group studied deals with the problem of local and cultural diversity.
The aim of this study cannot be to develop generalisable, representative findings; in view of the limited empirical basis, this is not even possible. Rather, the aim is to reconstruct typical problems and solutions for dealing with diversity of place and culture in transnational corporations.
Cf. project "Multicultural Corporations"External cooperation partners:
DFG project "Glocal Knowledge", Institute of Sociology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Prof. Gert Schmidt, Prof. Ilja Srubar)Project management: Prof Dr Ursula Mense-Petermann
Multicultural groups
Project ending date: End of 2001
Brief description
The project ending date is based on the assumption that globally operating corporations are confronted with new problems of coordination and control of corporate activities in the course of the change from multinational to transnational corporations. When R&D, production and distribution processes are restructured in a transnational and spatially far-reaching manner, bi- or multicultural communication and co-operation relationships arise. Transnational corporations are now faced with the task of achieving synergy effects in these internationally ramified networks on the one hand, and exploiting local innovation and problem-solving potential on the other. The question of newly developing coordination and control models and the role of culture in transnational corporations is therefore at the centre of the project.
In this pilot study, this question was initially analysed using the example of a foreign subsidiary of a German group.
External cooperation partners:
DFG project "Communication in multicultural companies", Institute of Sociology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Prof. Gert Schmidt, Prof. IljaSrubar)Project management: Prof. Dr Ursula Mense-Petermann
- Conferences
IREC (Industrial Relations in Europe Conference) "Transnational Labour Markets and Industrial Relations"
Convenors: Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick (London) Richard Hyman (London), Ursula Mense-Petermann (Bielefeld)
02. - 04.09.2019 ZiF, Bielefeld University3rd ISA-Forum of Sociology "The Futures we want: Global Sociology and the Struggles for a Better World"
"In Search of the Global Labour market. Actors, Institutions and Policies".
RC02: Economy and Society. Session Organiser: Ursula Mense-Petermann
10-14 July 2016, Vienna, AustriaWorkshop of the ZiF working group "In Search of the Global Labour Market - Market Makers, Mobility Regimes, and Regulations"
Convenors: Ursula Mense-Petermann, Thomas Welskopp
05-07 February 2015, ZiF, Bielefeld University29th EGOS Colloquium "Bridging Continents, Cultures & Worldviews"
Panel: "Change in Multinational Firms: Expatriate Managers, Institutions and Sector Specific Issues". Convenors: Mike Geppert, Ursula Mense-Petermann, Kathleen M. Park
04-06 July 2013, Montréal, CanadaBielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology Annual Seminar "Work in a Globalising World"
08-10 April 2013, Bielefeld University"Work in the World Society - On the Transnationalisation of Highly Qualified Work"
25-26.05.2012 Bielefeld UniversityResearch workshop "Evaluation strategies and interpretation of qualitative data in sociological labour research" (2)
08.-09.07.2011 Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology
Organisers: Melanie Steiner, Almut KirschbaumResearch workshop "Evaluation strategies and interpretation of qualitative data in sociological labour research" (1)
20-22.01.2011 Bielefeld Graduate School in Historyand Sociology
Organisers: Melanie Steiner, Almut Kirschbaum"The globalisation of SMEs: 'Ongoing globalisation' or short-term adventures? The example of setting up subsidiaries in China"
15-16 July 2010 Hotel Mövenpick Bielefeld"Transnational corporations as a new type of organisation? Theoretical perspectives on glocality"
12-13.12.2003 IBZ Bielefeld
Organisers: Ursula Mense-Petermann, Gabriele Wagner- Teaching
We offer courses in the Faculty's bachelor courses, in particular in the subject module "Work, Economics, Social Policy" and in the module "Integration II: Economy/Society", in the module variants "Sociology of Work and Economics" of the Master's degree programme in Sociology and in the doctoral degree programme of the Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology.
- Doctoral Projects
Current doctoral projects
Kim Anh Dang
"Market-socialist Governance at Work: Urban Vietnamese Workers and their Management"Jonas Feldmann
"The Road Transport Sector of Germany, Poland and Lithuania since the 1990s. On the social constitution of a transnational labour market"Completed doctoral projects
Melanie Hyll
Changing career forms. Challenges for individuals and organisations. Munich and Mering: Rainer Hampp Verlag; 2014.Rory Tews
Social entrepreneurship in Germany: A Bourdieuan perspective. Bielefeld: University of Bielefeld; 2015.
Marius Meinhof
Shopping in China. Dispositions of consumerist subjectivation in the everyday life of Chinese students. Sociology of consumption and mass culture. Wiesbaden: VS Springer; 2018.
Awarded the 2018 Dissertation Prize of the German Sociological Association.Anna Jocham
Conflicts over labour power. On subjective conflict processing in the context of biography. Baden-Baden: Nomos; 2022Andre Meyer
The consequences of the internationalisation of small and medium-sized enterprises for social relations within the company. Bielefeld: Bielefeld University; 2022.Bastian Bredenkötter
Mobile managers as boundary spanners. An investigation of boundary spanner work in multinational companies. Bielefeld: Bielefeld University; 2022.Junchen Yan
"How can the Waiqi white-collars be described as a group? - A critical sociological investigation of Chinese modernisation (2012-2018)". Successfully passed disputation on 30 November 2022.- Publications
- Links
- German Sociological Association (DGS): www.soziologie.de
- Section of Labour and Industrial Sociology in the DGS: www.arbsoz.de
- Economic Sociology Section of the DGS: http://wirtsoz-dgs.mpifg.de
- Cosmobilities Network: http://www.cosmobilities.net
- European Group for Organisational Studies (EGOS): http://www.egosnet.org/
- Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE): https://sase.org/
- Institute for World Society Studies: www.uni-bielefeld.de/soz/iw/
- Team
- Contact
Prof. Dr. Ursula Mense-Petermann
Professor of the Sociology of Work and the Economy
- Telephone
- +49 521 106-4230
- Telephone secretary
- +49 521 106-4231
- Room
- Gebäude X C3-223
