Institutional Theory and Economic Transformation: Enterprise Employment Relations in Bulgaria

Abstract

This article employs institutional theory to analyse the remodelling of employment relations after the transformation from socialism to a market-based economy. Such transformation is subject to constraints deriving from institutional legacies which include both structures and ideational forces, and which create path dependence. We report empirical research on employment relations within Bulgarian enterprises, and show how path dependency has interacted with intentional design. We identify the structural and cultural residues that mould post-socialist employment relations. The result is a system of industrial relations that combines conscious redesign along a continental European model of corporatist interest representation and collective bargaining with institutional residues from socialism which have themselves mutated with the collapse of traditional institutional structures after the revolution.