The collective bargaining challenges. The role of employers’ collective action in regulating the economy

In this article, we observe how employers are facing global and local challenges, which are often seen in IR literature as factors causing significant changes for businesses, workers, and consequently their representative associations. We observe that the logic of membership and the influence of employers’ actions are shaped by endogenous-organizational and exogenous-political factors, respectively. We are reporting the results of comparative research on the dynamics underlying employers’ interests and their strategies of action. In this research, we investigated—by using mixed methods of interviews, documents, and a survey—the developments in employers’ associations in Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the Slovak Republic, their preferences and positions in social policy, and the ways employers and their associations attempt to influence social policy in these five countries. The main results show that both endogenous and exogenous factors should seemingly show strong pushes towards business individualism—so much so that it would no longer make sense to consider employer associations (EAs) as relevant actors in industrial relations systems. However, in this article, we show that actual experiences and the emerging prospects are not linear and, in part, not as pessimistic regarding the collective action of employers.