Christian Lyhne Ibsen
Biographic Data
| ID | 253224 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christian Lyhne Ibsen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christian Lyhne |
| FAMILY NAME | Ibsen |
| SIGNATURE | IBSEN C L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Copenhagen |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4239-5085 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 106 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Mapping Green Skills in Collective Skill Formation Systems
Vocational education plays a vital role in fostering green skills that are central for achieving climate goals, sustaining economic competitiveness, and promoting social inclusion. Expectations are especially high for collective vocational education systems, in which both employers and the state are deeply involved in governance and funding. However, little is known about the extent to which collective systems have adapted to the skill demands of…
A Tale of Two Locals
Industrial relations (IR) scholars emphasize the strategic choices of industrial relations actors to explain IR processes and outcomes. This article asserts that union member satisfaction is critical to realize unions' objectives and that the local union and work context shapes satisfaction. The authors study the 2019 national UAW strike against General Motors in two, at first sight, very similar union locals. Union members of one local approved …
Integrating ecosocial policies through polycentric governance
How can polycentric governance promote the development of ecosocial policies within existing policy systems? Through a study of green reforms of Danish vocational education, the paper argues that polycentric governance institutions are particularly useful at engaging constituent actors in innovation and constructive collaboration over reforming education programs to integrate ecological goals into vocational education. Combining significant auton…
The politics of inflation and revitalisation of wage solidarity in Scandinavia
This article compares the policy and collective bargaining responses in the three Scandinavian countries to the cost-of-living crisis that began in 2021. The countries are known for their coordinated and consensual response to exogenous shocks. However, Scandinavian variants of neoliberal reforms, the 2009 Financial Crisis and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic have challenged the model. The comparative analysis finds three things. First, Norw…
Introduction to the special issue
This special issue analyses governments’ and social partners’ responses to the cost-of-living crisis of 2021–2023, and dynamics of coordination and conflict underlying them. The study of inflation responses needs updating. First, because compared to the 1970s–1980s, the recent inflation crisis was hardly intensified by high wage demands. Secondly, because industrial relations and collective bargaining institutions have over the last three decades…
Arrangers and orchestrators
This article compares the changing role of the state in initial vocational education and training (VET) in Germany and Denmark. Scholars have argued that collectivist VET systems face a stark choice between erosion through dualization or state take-over that crowds out decentralized cooperation by firms. Yet, recent work suggests that the state can revitalize the traditional firm-based system of VET through so-called state 'orchestration' and sof…
Ideas and power in employment relations studies
Motivated by the efforts to understand shifting dynamics of change and stability in employment relations—not least ones brought on by a decade of crisis in what was a neoliberal consensus—scholars increasingly focus on the role of ideas, discourses, and identities. This paper argues for the potential of continuing down this path of employing ideational explanations in employment relations. First, it highlights four key weaknesses of employing mor…
Do Workers Speak Up When Feeling Job Insecure? Examining Workers’ Response to Precarity During the Covid-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic inflicted unprecedented precarity upon workers, including concerns about job insecurity. We examine whether workers respond to job insecurity with voice, and assess the role of unions, managers, and employment arrangements in this relationship. Analyses of an original 2020 survey representative of Illinois and Michigan workers show that job insecurity is not significantly associated with voice. Further, while we find that un…
Skills for the Future? A Life Cycle Perspective on Systems of Vocational Education and Training
In this article, the authors ask how the institutional design of vocational education and training (VET) affects worker adaptability to changing skill demands over the life cycle. They compare two types of VET systems. Collectivist systems have high employer involvement and focus on specific skills, whereas Statist systems have lower employer involvement and focus more on general skills. Based on prior research demonstrating the importance of gen…
Quiet Politics and the Power of Business
This introduction summarizes the main contributions of this special issue titled 'Quiet Politics and the Power of Business: New Perspectives in an Era of Noisy Politics.' The four articles in the issue use and extend Culpepper's influential concept of 'quiet politics' according to which business is able to shape policies and regulations when issues are of low salience to the public and politicians. The issue takes Culpepper's analysis further in …
Quiet Politics, Trade Unions, and the Political Elite Network
Pepper Culpepper's seminal Quiet Politics and Business Power has revitalized the study of when business elites can shape policies away from public scrutiny. This article takes the concept of quiet politics to a new, and surprising, set of actors: trade union leaders. Focusing on the case of Denmark, it argues that quiet politics functions through political elite networks and that this way of doing politics favors a particular kind of corporatist …
Three dimensions of institutional contention
This article develops a new analytical framework to account for institutional change in vocational education and training (VET) systems. Trajectories of institutional change are typically explained using one of two perspectives on institutional contention. First, the Varieties of Capitalism-approach highlights positive efficiency effects from coordination between companies on skill formation. Second, a historical institutionalist approach focuses…
Trade union revitalisation
In this article, we review and assess research on the role of trade unions in labour markets and society, the current decline of unions and union revitalisation. The review shows three main trends. First, trade unions are converging into similar strategies of revitalisation. The ‘organising model’ has spread far beyond the Anglo-Saxon countries and is now commonplace for unions as a way to reach new worker constituencies. Thus, even in ‘instituti…
Diverging Solidarity
The transition from Fordist manufacturing to the so-called knowledge economy confronts organized labor across the advanced market economies with a new and more difficult landscape. Many scholars have suggested that the future of egalitarian capitalism depends on forging new political coalitions that bridge the interests of workers in the “new” and “old” economies. This article explores current trajectories of change in Denmark and Sweden, two cou…
Social Customs and Trade Union Membership
In this article, we investigate the effect of social customs on one of the most important instances of collective action, namely, workers uniting in trade unions. Although many studies have used social custom theory to explain unionization, existing studies have not adequately analysed social customs at the workplace. Using workplace union density as a proxy for social custom, this analysis improves existing studies in a number of ways. First, mu…
Making sense of employer collectivism – The case of Danish wage bargaining under recession
This conceptual article argues that preferences of employers for collective action cannot be reduced to rational actors making decisions based on market structures or institutional logics. Both markets and institutions are inherently ambiguous and employers therefore have to settle for plausible – rather than accurate – rational strategies among many alternatives through so-called sensemaking. Sensemaking refers to the process by which employers …
Mapping the frontier of theory in industrial relations
The widespread decline of trade unions and the emergence of various alternative forms of worker voice and representation have posed a challenge to the field of industrial relations and generated significant rethinking of the future directions for this field of study. In this article, we examine how well industrial relations meta-theories, when combined with efforts to build middle-range theories, provide distinctive explanations and different pre…
Strained Compromises? Danish Flexicurity During Crisis
The Danish concept of flexicurity in a `Golden Triangle ́ of low job protection, high income security and high employment security is not only about a balance between labor market flexibility and social security. Arguably, it is also a series of more or less stable underlying compromises between social partners about the main mechanisms and aims of labor market regulation which - supposedly - should be focused on employment rather than jobs, and …
Bargaining in the crisis - a comparison of the 2010 collective bargaining round in the Danish and Swedish manufacturing sectors
The economic crisis weighed heavily on the 2010 collective bargaining rounds in the Danish and Swedish manufacturing sectors — the pattern-setting sectors in both countries. This article analyses and compares the bargaining rounds from agenda-setting to signing, pointing to the significant differences in bargaining structures, processes and output. On the whole, the crisis seems to have had little effect on the Danish bargaining system due to a s…
Path dependence and independent utility regulation
The establishment of the Danish independent regulatory authorities for the energy and telecommunications sectors was based upon EU directives as part of their liberalisation process. Following the concepts of transaction costs and path dependency this article analyses differences in independence between the two authorities – the Danish Energy Regulatory Authority (Energitilsynet) and the National IT and Telecommunications Agency (IT- og Telestyre…
Quiet Politics and the Power of Business
This introduction summarizes the main contributions of this special issue titled 'Quiet Politics and the Power of Business: New Perspectives in an Era of Noisy Politics.' The four articles in the issue use and extend Culpepper's influential concept of 'quiet politics' according to which business is able to shape policies and regulations when issues are of low salience to the public and politicians. The issue takes Culpepper's analysis further in …
Three dimensions of institutional contention
This article develops a new analytical framework to account for institutional change in vocational education and training (VET) systems. Trajectories of institutional change are typically explained using one of two perspectives on institutional contention. First, the Varieties of Capitalism-approach highlights positive efficiency effects from coordination between companies on skill formation. Second, a historical institutionalist approach focuses…
Diverging Solidarity
The transition from Fordist manufacturing to the so-called knowledge economy confronts organized labor across the advanced market economies with a new and more difficult landscape. Many scholars have suggested that the future of egalitarian capitalism depends on forging new political coalitions that bridge the interests of workers in the “new” and “old” economies. This article explores current trajectories of change in Denmark and Sweden, two cou…
Mapping the frontier of theory in industrial relations
The widespread decline of trade unions and the emergence of various alternative forms of worker voice and representation have posed a challenge to the field of industrial relations and generated significant rethinking of the future directions for this field of study. In this article, we examine how well industrial relations meta-theories, when combined with efforts to build middle-range theories, provide distinctive explanations and different pre…
Do Workers Speak Up When Feeling Job Insecure? Examining Workers’ Response to Precarity During the Covid-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic inflicted unprecedented precarity upon workers, including concerns about job insecurity. We examine whether workers respond to job insecurity with voice, and assess the role of unions, managers, and employment arrangements in this relationship. Analyses of an original 2020 survey representative of Illinois and Michigan workers show that job insecurity is not significantly associated with voice. Further, while we find that un…
Quiet Politics, Trade Unions, and the Political Elite Network
Pepper Culpepper's seminal Quiet Politics and Business Power has revitalized the study of when business elites can shape policies away from public scrutiny. This article takes the concept of quiet politics to a new, and surprising, set of actors: trade union leaders. Focusing on the case of Denmark, it argues that quiet politics functions through political elite networks and that this way of doing politics favors a particular kind of corporatist …
Social Customs and Trade Union Membership
In this article, we investigate the effect of social customs on one of the most important instances of collective action, namely, workers uniting in trade unions. Although many studies have used social custom theory to explain unionization, existing studies have not adequately analysed social customs at the workplace. Using workplace union density as a proxy for social custom, this analysis improves existing studies in a number of ways. First, mu…
Arrangers and orchestrators
This article compares the changing role of the state in initial vocational education and training (VET) in Germany and Denmark. Scholars have argued that collectivist VET systems face a stark choice between erosion through dualization or state take-over that crowds out decentralized cooperation by firms. Yet, recent work suggests that the state can revitalize the traditional firm-based system of VET through so-called state 'orchestration' and sof…
Skills for the Future? A Life Cycle Perspective on Systems of Vocational Education and Training
In this article, the authors ask how the institutional design of vocational education and training (VET) affects worker adaptability to changing skill demands over the life cycle. They compare two types of VET systems. Collectivist systems have high employer involvement and focus on specific skills, whereas Statist systems have lower employer involvement and focus more on general skills. Based on prior research demonstrating the importance of gen…
A Tale of Two Locals
Industrial relations (IR) scholars emphasize the strategic choices of industrial relations actors to explain IR processes and outcomes. This article asserts that union member satisfaction is critical to realize unions' objectives and that the local union and work context shapes satisfaction. The authors study the 2019 national UAW strike against General Motors in two, at first sight, very similar union locals. Union members of one local approved …
Path dependence and independent utility regulation
The establishment of the Danish independent regulatory authorities for the energy and telecommunications sectors was based upon EU directives as part of their liberalisation process. Following the concepts of transaction costs and path dependency this article analyses differences in independence between the two authorities – the Danish Energy Regulatory Authority (Energitilsynet) and the National IT and Telecommunications Agency (IT- og Telestyre…
Strained Compromises? Danish Flexicurity During Crisis
The Danish concept of flexicurity in a `Golden Triangle ́ of low job protection, high income security and high employment security is not only about a balance between labor market flexibility and social security. Arguably, it is also a series of more or less stable underlying compromises between social partners about the main mechanisms and aims of labor market regulation which - supposedly - should be focused on employment rather than jobs, and …
Bargaining in the crisis - a comparison of the 2010 collective bargaining round in the Danish and Swedish manufacturing sectors
The economic crisis weighed heavily on the 2010 collective bargaining rounds in the Danish and Swedish manufacturing sectors — the pattern-setting sectors in both countries. This article analyses and compares the bargaining rounds from agenda-setting to signing, pointing to the significant differences in bargaining structures, processes and output. On the whole, the crisis seems to have had little effect on the Danish bargaining system due to a s…
Mapping the frontier of theory in industrial relations
The widespread decline of trade unions and the emergence of various alternative forms of worker voice and representation have posed a challenge to the field of industrial relations and generated significant rethinking of the future directions for this field of study. In this article, we examine how well industrial relations meta-theories, when combined with efforts to build middle-range theories, provide distinctive explanations and different pre…
Making sense of employer collectivism – The case of Danish wage bargaining under recession
This conceptual article argues that preferences of employers for collective action cannot be reduced to rational actors making decisions based on market structures or institutional logics. Both markets and institutions are inherently ambiguous and employers therefore have to settle for plausible – rather than accurate – rational strategies among many alternatives through so-called sensemaking. Sensemaking refers to the process by which employers …
Trade union revitalisation
In this article, we review and assess research on the role of trade unions in labour markets and society, the current decline of unions and union revitalisation. The review shows three main trends. First, trade unions are converging into similar strategies of revitalisation. The ‘organising model’ has spread far beyond the Anglo-Saxon countries and is now commonplace for unions as a way to reach new worker constituencies. Thus, even in ‘instituti…
Diverging Solidarity
The transition from Fordist manufacturing to the so-called knowledge economy confronts organized labor across the advanced market economies with a new and more difficult landscape. Many scholars have suggested that the future of egalitarian capitalism depends on forging new political coalitions that bridge the interests of workers in the “new” and “old” economies. This article explores current trajectories of change in Denmark and Sweden, two cou…
Social Customs and Trade Union Membership
In this article, we investigate the effect of social customs on one of the most important instances of collective action, namely, workers uniting in trade unions. Although many studies have used social custom theory to explain unionization, existing studies have not adequately analysed social customs at the workplace. Using workplace union density as a proxy for social custom, this analysis improves existing studies in a number of ways. First, mu…
Three dimensions of institutional contention
This article develops a new analytical framework to account for institutional change in vocational education and training (VET) systems. Trajectories of institutional change are typically explained using one of two perspectives on institutional contention. First, the Varieties of Capitalism-approach highlights positive efficiency effects from coordination between companies on skill formation. Second, a historical institutionalist approach focuses…
Quiet Politics and the Power of Business
This introduction summarizes the main contributions of this special issue titled 'Quiet Politics and the Power of Business: New Perspectives in an Era of Noisy Politics.' The four articles in the issue use and extend Culpepper's influential concept of 'quiet politics' according to which business is able to shape policies and regulations when issues are of low salience to the public and politicians. The issue takes Culpepper's analysis further in …
Quiet Politics, Trade Unions, and the Political Elite Network
Pepper Culpepper's seminal Quiet Politics and Business Power has revitalized the study of when business elites can shape policies away from public scrutiny. This article takes the concept of quiet politics to a new, and surprising, set of actors: trade union leaders. Focusing on the case of Denmark, it argues that quiet politics functions through political elite networks and that this way of doing politics favors a particular kind of corporatist …
Ideas and power in employment relations studies
Motivated by the efforts to understand shifting dynamics of change and stability in employment relations—not least ones brought on by a decade of crisis in what was a neoliberal consensus—scholars increasingly focus on the role of ideas, discourses, and identities. This paper argues for the potential of continuing down this path of employing ideational explanations in employment relations. First, it highlights four key weaknesses of employing mor…
Do Workers Speak Up When Feeling Job Insecure? Examining Workers’ Response to Precarity During the Covid-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic inflicted unprecedented precarity upon workers, including concerns about job insecurity. We examine whether workers respond to job insecurity with voice, and assess the role of unions, managers, and employment arrangements in this relationship. Analyses of an original 2020 survey representative of Illinois and Michigan workers show that job insecurity is not significantly associated with voice. Further, while we find that un…
Skills for the Future? A Life Cycle Perspective on Systems of Vocational Education and Training
In this article, the authors ask how the institutional design of vocational education and training (VET) affects worker adaptability to changing skill demands over the life cycle. They compare two types of VET systems. Collectivist systems have high employer involvement and focus on specific skills, whereas Statist systems have lower employer involvement and focus more on general skills. Based on prior research demonstrating the importance of gen…
Integrating ecosocial policies through polycentric governance
How can polycentric governance promote the development of ecosocial policies within existing policy systems? Through a study of green reforms of Danish vocational education, the paper argues that polycentric governance institutions are particularly useful at engaging constituent actors in innovation and constructive collaboration over reforming education programs to integrate ecological goals into vocational education. Combining significant auton…
The politics of inflation and revitalisation of wage solidarity in Scandinavia
This article compares the policy and collective bargaining responses in the three Scandinavian countries to the cost-of-living crisis that began in 2021. The countries are known for their coordinated and consensual response to exogenous shocks. However, Scandinavian variants of neoliberal reforms, the 2009 Financial Crisis and, more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic have challenged the model. The comparative analysis finds three things. First, Norw…
Introduction to the special issue
This special issue analyses governments’ and social partners’ responses to the cost-of-living crisis of 2021–2023, and dynamics of coordination and conflict underlying them. The study of inflation responses needs updating. First, because compared to the 1970s–1980s, the recent inflation crisis was hardly intensified by high wage demands. Secondly, because industrial relations and collective bargaining institutions have over the last three decades…
Arrangers and orchestrators
This article compares the changing role of the state in initial vocational education and training (VET) in Germany and Denmark. Scholars have argued that collectivist VET systems face a stark choice between erosion through dualization or state take-over that crowds out decentralized cooperation by firms. Yet, recent work suggests that the state can revitalize the traditional firm-based system of VET through so-called state 'orchestration' and sof…
Mapping Green Skills in Collective Skill Formation Systems
Vocational education plays a vital role in fostering green skills that are central for achieving climate goals, sustaining economic competitiveness, and promoting social inclusion. Expectations are especially high for collective vocational education systems, in which both employers and the state are deeply involved in governance and funding. However, little is known about the extent to which collective systems have adapted to the skill demands of…
A Tale of Two Locals
Industrial relations (IR) scholars emphasize the strategic choices of industrial relations actors to explain IR processes and outcomes. This article asserts that union member satisfaction is critical to realize unions' objectives and that the local union and work context shapes satisfaction. The authors study the 2019 national UAW strike against General Motors in two, at first sight, very similar union locals. Union members of one local approved …
Political science (17 works) · Economics (16 works) · Labor Movements and Unions (11 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (11 works) · Danish (8 works) · Employment and Welfare Studies (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Labour economics (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Politics (6 works)