The Union Response to International Corporations

The purpose of this paper has been to examine, on a pre-liminary basis, some of the implications of the international corporationunion interface for individual countries. It has been suggested that the impact of this interface will depend on the production strategy of the international corporation, the solidarity of the coalition of the unions in different countries, and the economic and political conditions prevailing in the individual countries. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the bargaining relationship between unions and international corporations, it is suggested that research will have to be conducted on the following topics: the industrial relations decision-making process of international firms, in particular the ways in which these firms react to international collective bargaining; the alternative strategies open to unions in international collective bargaining; the impact of international unionism and international firms on the industrial relations system of individual countries; the problems associated with international collective bargaining involving unions with different political ideologies; and the impact of international unionism on economic and political integration and the perception of national governments.     

Globalization and Industrial Relations in East Asia: A Three-Country Comparison

Globalization enhances competitiveness, both at the level of the firm and at the level of the nation. As observed in China, Malaysia, and Korea, this leads management and the state to adopt strategies designed to increase labor effectiveness to the benefit of capital. However, the effect of globalization on industrial relations procedures and substantive outcomes is contingent. Pressure for greater flexibility in the use of labor is ubiquitous, but the outcome is constrained by cultural norms valuing hierarchy and security. State strategies vary by historical circumstance, resource endowments, and internal political dynamics, including the influence of trade unions. While Malaysian industrial relations is heavily constrained by the discipline of high exposure to international capital, in China and Korea, major struggles are shaping the future of workplace and national labor market governance. Thus the extent and impact of globalization vary between countries, resulting in similar preoccupations by policymakers yet leading to variable responses and industrial relations outcomes.     

International Framework Agreements and Industrial Relations Governance: Global Rhetoric versus Local Realities

The article discusses the local impact of international framework agreements (IFAs). It presents findings from empirical research carried out in two Spanish MNCs, and it examines how the commitments stipulated by the texts of the IFAs translate in local practice in different subsidiaries in Central and South America. The article follows the policy cycle of both agreements, and it further evaluates them as emerging private institutions of global industrial relations governance. The main findings reveal a paradox. The generic character of IFAs encourages corporate consent for their adoption, but, in practice, it gives precedence to local laws and hence renders the enforcement of compliance difficult, and, in some cases, unfeasible. And where local laws contravene or lack compatibility with International Labour Organization conventions, the central premise of IFAs as instruments of global governance is largely undermined.     

Finance, Corporate Governance and the Management of Labour: A Conceptual and Comparative Analysis

This article explores links between the firm's financial structure, corporate governance, and the management of labour. It reviews various literatures, in particular drawing from financial economics and political economy, and combines these with industrial relations, and human resource management. We develop a model that identifies how financial institutions and pressures impact upon labour management. Managerial discretion is at the centre of the model, and six key influences and constraints upon management are identified. We present evidence from comparative analysis of labour management which illustrates how management decisions and practices are affected. A benefit of this approach is that it can take account of within‐country variations.     

Richard Hyman: Marxism,Trade Unionism and Comparative Employment Relations

Richard Hyman has been a hugely influential figure in the field of industrial relations for the best part of four decades. At a time when the future of the very subject has been questioned, we highlight three areas of Hyman's work that we believe provide fertile territory for future research. The first concerns the importance of theory and the continuing need to broaden the subject of industrial relations so that it is treated as an area in which we can examine wider questions about ‘the political economy of waged labour’. The second area is the changing nature of employee representation which, for much of Hyman's career, was synonymous with the analysis of trade unions under capitalism. The third area is one of the more striking recent successes within the subject, namely the study of comparative industrial relations. Each of these areas reveals Hyman's talent for identifying and clarifying a set of issues around the politics of work that will endure regardless of whether the subject is known as industrial relations, employment relations or human resource management.     

全球价值链治理与地方产业网络升级研究--以上海浦东集成电路产业网络为例

在全球化背景下，以地方产业网络为发展模式的区域经济，其竞争力的提升需要在全球价值链中与区域外的经济行为主体积极互动，并实现升级。在这种研究视角下，本文首先界定了价值链治理的概念，然后从理论上阐述了全球价值链治理的主要类型，以及价值链治理对地方产业网络升级的影响。并在调研的基础上，以嵌入生产者驱动型价值链的浦东集成电路(以下简称IC)地方产业网络作为研究的对象，分析了全球IDM公司的治理行为对浦东IC地方产业网络升级的影响。在此基础上笔者提出，价值链治理者——全球领先公司，对地方产业网络升级的推动或阻挡，决定于地方产业网络的升级行为是否侵犯了其核心竞争力，而不是决定于地方产业网络升级的“类型”。这一结论是对国际研究的补充和修正。     

Rethinking Institutions and Institutional Change in European Industrial Relations

This article traces the process of institutional change in industrial relations in Britain, France and Sweden over the last quarter‐century in order to identify the mechanisms and forms of institutional change. These three cases demonstrate a high degree of institutional plasticity, and a greater convergence in industrial relations than comparisons of national institutions have tended to suggest. These findings in turn suggest the need to rethink both the role of institutions and the nature of institutional change in comparative political economy.     

后危机时期世界经济格局的动态转换

始于2007年的金融危机,使全球经济遭到了历史罕见的巨大冲击。世界经济的各种力量对比开始发生此消彼长的变化,世界经济格局处于动态转换之中：世界经济结构加快调整,全球经济治理机制深刻变革,科技创新和产业转型孕育突破,发展中国家特别是新兴市场国家整体实力步入上升期,世界多极化深入发展。我国应科学认识世界经济格局变化特点,准确把握经济发展的战略机遇期,加快实施经济结构战略性调整,争取在未来的全球经济合作竞争中建立更大的比较优势。     

Global marketing and procurement of industrial products: Institutional design of interfirm functional tasks

Marketing and procuring component parts in the global marketplace can pose such significant trading hazards that industrial transactions often must be embedded in protective governance. This article identifies key forces influencing the institutional designs that best safeguard exchanges between international trading partners for such industrial tasks as the design, fabrication and delivery of component parts. The effectiveness of designs such as market contracting, alliances, and international joint ventures are shown to be a consequence of the transactional characteristics of a given task, the governance risks experienced by both buyer and supplier, and the differences between the institutional environments of the partners' countries. In addition to a comprehensive institutional design model, several propositions are developed to serve as a guide to future empirical research in the areas of global industrial marketing and procurement.     

Interests, Institutions and Industrial Relations

In the comparative politics literature there are two main approaches to the impact of international economic change on national policy patterns. The first — new institutionalism — has been very influential in comparative industrial relations scholarship. The second, which focuses on the role of interests, has been less prominent. Comparing industrial relations reform in Australia and New Zealand during the 1980s and 1990s, this paper argues that there are a number of limitations to an institutionalist approach and outlines a framework for the comparative study of the impact of international economic change on national patterns of industrial relations which integrates both institutionalist and interest‐based approaches.     

Organised industrial relations in the information economy: the German automotive sector as a test case

This paper explores changes in industrial relations in the German automotive sector. Historically, this sector has generated important insights about national ‘models’ and the political economy of work. It is argued that vertical disintegration has created new market‐mediated boundaries that have undermined existing patterns of organised industrial relations.     

知识经济的生产要素及其国际分布

本文通过对知识经济不同于工业化经济的要素结构的分析,指出发展中国家在当代国际分工发展趋势中不利地位的性质与特点,文章通过统计资料证明,发达国家在知识经济要素上比发展中国家更为富裕,从而在经济全球化及国际分工深化中处于更有利的地位,文章提出了经济发展中的要素规划,形成要素动态富裕,国家要实行“全球规划型发展战略”,企业要实行“全球组合型经营战略”。     

Economic Integration and State Responses: Change in European Industrial Relations since Maastricht

The article analyses industrial relations change in the six largest EU countries since 1992 in relation to increased internationalization pressures. Based on qualitative and quantitative analysis, it distinguishes between associational and state governance, and detects that despite a predominant, but not universal, trend of weakening trade unions and collective bargaining, no overall liberalization has occurred in the political regulation of employment (employment policies, welfare state, labour law, state support to collective bargaining, public sector). Rather than converging towards neoliberalism, industrial relations emerge as more politically contingent and dependent on multiple forms of power, which are affected by internationalization in different ways.     

Third-party certification in the global agrifood system

Recently, third-party certification (TPC) has emerged as a significant regulatory mechanism in the global agrifood system. It reflects a broader shift from public to private governance. Traditionally, government agencies were responsible for monitoring food safety and quality standards. However, the globalization of the agrifood system, the consolidation of the food retail industry, and the rise in private retailer standards have precipitated a shift in responsibility for this task to third-party certifiers. This development is reconfiguring social, political, and economic relations throughout the contemporary agrifood system. In discussing the rise of TPC, this paper focuses on the role and implications for three key stakeholder groups: supermarket chains, producers, and non-governmental organizations. We conclude that TPC reflects the growing power of supermarkets to regulate the global agrifood system. At the same time, TPC also offers opportunities to create alternative practices that are more socially and environmentally sustainable.     

香港经济的国际竞争力及对中国经济增长的贡献

文章对香港回归后国际竞争力的提升以及对中国经济增长的贡献进行了较为全面的研究。通过分析认为,香港已经成为具有国际竞争力的经济体,产业发展具有较强的国际竞争力,国际化大都市的产业结构已经形成,尤其是高端生产性服务业具有较强国际竞争力,已经形成了国际商贸中心、国际金融中心、国际航运航空物流中心、国际科技资讯中心的地位。香港对中国经济增长的贡献与作用十分突出,主要体现在,为内地提供优质生产性服务业,扩大内地国际贸易和利用外资,支持内地企业走出去,支持内地金融国际化,带动殊三角、泛殊三角地区经济发展与产业结构升级等方面。客观评价香港在中国经济中的地位与作用,对于新时期发挥香港的优势,促进香港的繁荣与稳定具有重要意义。     

Industrial Relations in Transition Economies: Emergent Industrial Relations Institutions in Bulgaria

East European societies currently in transition to market economies are creating new structures for industrial relations. Transition has ambiguous effects upon the relations between industrial relations institutions and the state. On the one hand, economic pluralism implies separation between state and economy and 'depoliticization'. On the other, economic crises and threats to social order require co-operation between state and unions. The influence of the state is greater because of the embryonic form of employer organization and enterprise-level management. This paper examines the political and economic contexts of industrial relations in Bulgaria, as an example of one type of 'constrained' collective bargaining system. The paper emphasizes continuities between the communist and post-communist period, and the central role of trade unions in the transition process.     

全球价值链模式的产业转移——动力、影响与对中国产业升级和区域协调发展的启示

全球价值链(Global Value Chain,GVC)作为组织当今国际产业转移的主要方式,已经对全球经济的微观基础产生了根本性的影响。本文对GVC模式的产业转移从学理上进行了界定,阐述了给全球化带来的四个特征性事实;在从要素特征、竞争优势、技术进步、市场环境和国家战略等方面分析了GVC模式的产业转移的驱动力量后,指出由GVC来主导产业转移所形成的国际分工体系,是国际技术前沿的实施机制;进一步,本文探究了GVC模式的产业转移对发展中国家产业升级的影响;本文最后指出,将GVC模式的产业转移内涵的竞争方式,与自身的国情和优势相结合来发展国内价值链,应该是中国实现产业升级和缩小地区差距的一条新思路。     

Do Industrial Relations Institutions Influence Foreign Direct Investment? Evidence from OECD Nations

The potential impact of industrial relations institutions on economic outcomes has been a key element in analyzing the governing of the global workplace. We present case information and analysis that show that there are trade‐offs between higher levels of economic outcomes and greater equity and employee voice associated with more and deeper labor market institutions. The estimates from the model show the impact of industrial relations system policies within a nation on a country's foreign direct investment (FDI) from other nations for the period 1985 through 2000 using data from nations that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD). Examples of the impact of major transformations in national industrial relations systems on FDI for UK and New Zealand also are presented. Our results show that higher levels of industrial relations institutions from the firms’ perspective are usually associated with lower levels of FDI.     

The Politics of Partnership? Innovation in Employment Relations in the Scottish Spirits Industry

Perspectives that emphasize links between workplace innovation and broader HR policies, particularly of a 'mutual gains' nature, have become increasingly influential. This paper analyses the links and tensions between workplace change and industrial relations systems in the context of attempts to create a shop-floor politics of partnership during a period of corporate restructuring in two spirits companies. We argue that interface tensions between the employment relationship, the labour process and organizational governance are inextricably linked to the outcomes of partnership initiatives. While there are positive outcomes to more integrated approaches to partnership, a range of industrial relations issues, notably the ambivalent position of shop-stewards, remains problematic.     

Taiwan: An Exploration of Labour Relations in Transition

This paper explores the emerging relations between workers and employers in Taiwan. The lifting of martial law in 1987 and other reforms have set in motion a basic restructuring of the industrial relations system. A union movement dominated by the interests of employers and the ruling political party has given workers little leverage in the employment relationship. Constrained collective bargaining plus consultation with employers offers the best long-term prospect of providing a systematic basis for worker participation in the workplace and broader business and economic decision-making.