Eine historisch-institutionalistische Perspektive auf den deutschen Lebensmitteleinzelhandel

This article analyses the development of the institutional environment that has shaped the structure of the German grocery retail industry. In the institutional domain of corporate governance, retailers' cooperatives as well as various obscure corporate forms dominate. Urban and spatial planning regulations have since the 1960s protected smaller retail stores like supermarkets and hard discount stores. In the domain of vocational education and training, at about the same time, a two-year apprenticeship with reduced contents was introduced. The conservative German welfare state encourages women not to work full-time but part-time, as is very common in the retail industry. In the domain of industrial relations, institutions like trade unions and works councils are relatively week. Finally, supplier relationships have become highly conflictive and price focused. Thus, the institutions of the German grocery retail industry are very different from those usually seen as typical for Germany, especially for its core manufacturing industries. Further, these specific characteristics of the retail industry have not just evolved during the last decades, but are frequently rooted in a long German Mittelstand tradition and then became decisively shaped during the critical juncture of the retail revolution of the 1960s.