Varieties of Industrial Relations Research: Take‐over,Convergence or Divergence?

Industrial relations (IR) research faces various pressures of internationalization. Not only do global economic forces increasingly shape the subject of the discipline, employment relations, but also the academic community itself is becoming more international. The article discusses whether and in what ways IR research is affected by these trends. It is based on a comparative, longitudinal study of journal publications in the USA, Britain and Germany. The findings reveal significantly different patterns of IR research across the three countries. In particular, the strong variation between US and British research patterns challenges the common notion of a homogeneous Anglo‐Saxon style in conducting social science research. The analysis suggests that despite growing internationalization, IR research continues to be strongly embedded in nationally specific research cultures and traditions.     

Economic Citizenship and Workplace Conflict in Anglo‐American Industrial Relations Systems

This article argues that the expansion of individual employment rights is presenting a series of challenges to the collective model of economic citizenship that prevailed in most of the Anglo‐American world during the last century. We examine developments in the management of workplace conflict in Anglo‐American countries to highlight the institutional manoeuvrings that have been taking place to mould the nature of national regimes of employment rights. We argue that Governments almost everywhere are actively seeking to create institutional regimes that weaken the impact of employment legislation and we find that statutory dispute resolution agencies are eagerly trying to develop organizational identities that are aligned with rights‐based employment disputes.     

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.     

Union Density in Israel 1995–2010: The Hybridization of Industrial Relations

In the past the Israeli industrial relations system was corporatist, characterized by high levels of membership in trade unions and employers' associations, as well as broad coverage of collective agreements. The corporatist system gradually eroded from the mid‐1980s, but its major transformation came with the removal of the Ghent‐like system in 1995. The article observes data collected since the transformation, distinguishing between membership and coverage trends. These distinctions aid in revealing that a hybrid of two distinct industrial relations subsystems has developed. The notion of hybridization suggests that unlike past accounts, which described the substitution of the corporatist industrial relations system by a liberal‐pluralist system, what actually emerges is their coexistence. Despite the path‐determined nature of the Israeli hybrid, the interaction between coverage and membership is instructive for understanding strategic choices made in other European countries in which a similar gap emerged. The article notes the potential for synergy between the two subsystems and notes the actual development of rivalry and friction.     

Industrial Relations Climate and Union Commitment: An Evaluation of Workplace‐Level Effects

This paper examines the relationship between industrial relations (IR) climate and union commitment. Using a multi‐workplace sample from North East England, aggregation analysis provided support for treating IR climate as a workplace‐level variable, and workplace IR climate was negatively associated with union commitment. However, IR climate moderated none of the relationships between individual‐level antecedents and union commitment.     

Privatization, Regulation and Industrial Relations

The article examines the consequences of privatization for the industrial relations of former public corporations. Three effects of privatization are explored: the ending of direct political control, the creation of a regulatory framework for the major utilities, and the replacing of a 'political' orientation by a 'shareholder' orientation in privatized companies. It is argued that each may have significant consequences for management strategies and industrial relations, although these may not be what either protagonists or opponents of privatization have anticipated.     

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.     

The Citizen‐Consumer as Industrial Relations Actor: New Ways of Working and the End‐user in Social Care

This article explores the role of the citizen‐consumer as an actor in public service industrial relations. Based on research into the New Types of Worker programme in social care, the article considers how new work roles engage end‐users as citizen‐consumers in work relations and their consequences for stakeholders. It highlights the forms assumed by these roles and the factors influencing their development and impact, concluding that if the citizen‐consumer is to be treated as an actor in industrial relations, researchers must show greater sensitivity to the categories of end‐users and to the service context.     

Privatization, Markets and Industrial Relations in China

Within a context of gradual privatization and rapid marketization in China, this paper draws on detailed research of the perceived impact these have had on the work, status and attitudes of different industrial relations 'actors' within seven enterprises in Guangdong and Shanghai in 1998–9. It will be shown that the main pressure for tightening control over the workplace has come from the development of markets and that privatization has had important but limited catalytic effect in this process. Considerable internal and external constraints restrict the impact of privatization, which stem from China's continued ambivalence towards capitalist market relations.     

New Product Development Practices and Early‐Stage Firms: Two In‐Depth Case Studies

New product development practices (NPD) have been well studied for decades in large, established companies. Implementation of best practices such as predevelopment market planning and cross‐functional teams have been positively correlated with product and project success over a variety of measures. However, for small new ventures, field research into ground‐level adoption of NPD practices is lacking. Because of the risks associated with missteps in new product development and the potential for firm failure, understanding NPD within the new venture context is critical. Through in‐depth case research, this paper investigates two successful physical product‐based early‐stage firms' development processes versus large established firm norms. The research focuses on the start‐up adoption of commonly prescribed management processes to improve NPD, such as cross‐functional teams, use of market planning during innovation development, and the use of structured processes to guide the development team. This research has several theoretical implications. The first finding is that in comparing the innovation processes of these firms to large, established firms, the study found several key differences from the large firm paradigm. These differences in development approach from what is prescribed for large, established firms are driven by necessity from a scarcity of resources. These new firms simply did not have the resources (financial or human) to create multi‐ or cross‐functional teams or organizations in the traditional sense for their first product. Use of virtual resources was pervasive. Founders also played multiple roles concurrently in the organization, as opposed to relying on functional departments so common in large firms. The NPD process used by both firms was informal—much more skeletal than commonly recommended structured processes. The data indicated that these firms put less focus on managing the process and more emphasis on managing their goals (the main driver being getting the first product to market). In addition to little or no written procedures being used, development meetings did not run to specific paper‐based deliverables or defined steps. In terms of market and user insight, these activities were primarily performed inside the core team—using methods that again were distinctive in their approach. What drove a project to completion was relying on team experience or a “learn as you go approach.” Again, the driver for this type of truncated market research approach was a lack of resources and need to increase the project's speed‐to‐market. Both firms in our study were highly successful, from not only an NPD efficiency standpoint but also effectiveness. The second broad finding we draw from this work is that there are lessons to be learned from start‐ups for large, established firms seeking ever‐increasing efficiency. We have found that small empowered teams leading projects substantial in scope can be extremely effective when roles are expanded, decision power is ground‐level, and there is little emphasis on defined processes. This exploratory research highlights the unique aspects of NPD within small early‐stage firms, and highlights areas of further research and management implications for both small new ventures and large established firms seeking to increase NPD efficiency and effectiveness.     

The 2010 Revised Merger Guidelines and Modern Industrial Economics

The new Horizontal Merger Guidelines provide greater transparency into how the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission staffs review horizontal mergers than did the guidelines they replaced. While they reflect some advances in economic techniques for predicting the competitive consequences of mergers (most notabley the Upward Pricing Pressure test), greater attention to costs and efficiencies could further improve merger review.     

Evaluating Industrial Relations Systems of OECD Countries from 1993 to 2005: A Two‐Dimensional Approach

This article uses both cross‐sectional and longitudinal methods to evaluate the national industrial relations systems of 30 Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) countries from 1993 to 2005. We adopt a pluralistic view of industrial relations that gives equal weight to efficiency and equity, along with a general systems model consisting of input, process and output. We rank each country in terms of a combined score of efficiency and equity. We find that the 30 OECD countries can be separated into three distinct groups (high on both equity and efficiency; high on efficiency but low on equity; moderate on equity and low on efficiency), and that these groups exhibit considerable stability over time.