This chapter explores how national cultures can influence the relationship between stakeholders and strategies around the world; how the relationship between strategy and organization structure can be influenced by local regional differences; how national and regional cultures can influence decision-making process in organizations; and how corporate cultures are created and reinforced by cultural, organizational, and situational factors.

Solidarity is one of the rights mentioned as a central value in the preamble of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU and it is the title of chapter IV which contains with Art. 27 (workers’ right to information and consultation within the undertaking) and Art. 28 (right of collective bargaining and action) central rights of collective labor law. The protection of the weaker party is the central idea, both in individual labor law and in collective labor law. But to which extent does that include the idea of solidarity? If solidarity would be the basic idea of the concept of collective labor law, this would imply a strong social approach. The following elaboration looks for an attempt of a definition and analyzes the components of solidarity in collective labor law based upon European and German Labor Law, bearing in mind provisions and jurisdiction on trade union rights, collective bargaining, the right to strike and on European and German works councils. Besides a legal analysis, sociological methodology is also applied, when the internal and external dimension of solidarity or the concept of inclusive and exclusive solidarity are presented.

This chapter first scans the historical context of the “labor question” in the United States and the radically diverse interpretations and experimentation with “industrial democracy,” widely seen as the answer.Second, it outlines how industrial democracy ultimately came to have meaning through collective bargaining, with the enactment of the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, and how optimism about the law’s promise and achievements turned into disenchantment. Third, the essay sketches the glimmerings of industrial democracy’s revival, with the labor question’s reemergence.Creative experimentation is underway, older notions are being reimagined, collective action is on the rise, and the threat posed by worker’s diminished bargaining power is a matter of public debate.