Your search

Global Unions, Global Business: Global Union Federations and International Business, by Richard Croucher and Elizabeth Cotton, is reviewed.

Union Contributions to Labor Welfare Policy and Practice, edited by Paul A. Kurzman and R. Paul Maiden, is reviewed

The book, "Industrial Relations: Critical Perspectives on Business and Management," edited by John Kelly, is reviewed.

The article reviews and comments on several books including "Changing Governance of Local Economies," edited by Colin Crouch, Patrick Le Galès, Carlo Trigilia, and Helmut Voelzkow, "Convergence and Persistence in Corporate Governance," by Jeffrey N. Gordon and Mark J. Roe, and "The Global and the Local: Understanding the Dialectics of Business Systems," by Arndt Sorge.

The article reviews and comments on "Incoherent Empire" by Michael Mann, "Contours of Descent: US Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity" by Robert Pollin, and "Tyranny in America: Capitalism and National Decay" by Neal Wood.

The article reviews the books "Corporations in Evolving Diversity: Cognition, Governance and Institutions" by Masahiko Aoki, "The Institutions of the Market: Organizations, Social Systems and Governance" edited by Alexander Ebner and Nikolaus Beck, and "Internationalisation and Economic Institutions" by Mark Thatcher.

The article reviews the book, "We Are the Poors: Community Struggles in Post-Apartheid South Africa," by Ashwin Desai.

The paper examines South African trade unions from the late apartheid era to the present (2001). Anti-apartheid sanctions and disinvestment affected the labour movement, as did the disastrous miners' strike of 1987. Democratization in the period since has resulted in the lifting of embargoes and the phasing-out of tariffs and state subsidies for industries located near the former bantustans. There has been a growth of public sector unions and private sector unions have also reversed their decline. Generally, the unions are still a force to be reckened with, but the neoliberal turn of the ruling African National Congress, to which the unions are closely linked, poses a serious challenge.

Reviews the book "Strategy, Organization and the Changing Nature of Work," edited by Jordi Gual and Joan E. Ricart.

There is a growing body of literature on the role and impact of unions in the developing world, and on their ability to mobilize members against a background of neo-liberal reforms. The South African trade union movement represents a source of inspiration to organized labour worldwide, but has faced many challenges over the years. This article engages with debates on union solidarity and worker democracy, and draws on the findings of a nationwide survey of members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) to explore the extent of fragmentation according to gender, age, skill level and ethnicity. The survey reveals regular participation in union affairs, democratic accountability, participation in collective action, and a strong commitment to the labour movement, but variation in levels of engagement between categories of union members indicates significant implications for union policy and practice.

Editorial introduction to: Symposium sur les relations d’emploi et les nouveaux acteurs dans les économies émergentes / Symposium on Employment Relations and New Actors in Emerging Economies.

An influential strand of the finance literature focuses on the nature and extent of shareholder rights vis-a-vis employees. Most of the extant literature on the subject relies on a limited number of case studies and/or broad macroeconomic data, whereas this article draws on evidence from a large scale survey of organizations to test the predictions of the theories on the relative strength of workers and managers across the different governance regimes. This evidence highlights the complex relationship between societal institutions, legal traditions, political parties and electoral systems, on corporate governance regimes and the relative strength of unions and collective representation at workplace level, highlighting the limitations of the mainstream finance and economics rational-incentive based literature, and the value of alternative socio-economic approaches.

This paper is the first systematic attempt to provide an overview of industrial relations practices at firm level in Mozambique. Through a nationwide survey of firms, the paper assesses the extent to which specific sets of practices are associated with particular regions, and/or sectors, and explores the relationship between IR practice and national institutional realities. The survey revealed that informalism and autocratic managerialism characterize the practice of employment relations. But it would be mistaken to assume a convergence towards a global systematic archetype of low wage/low skill/low security of tenure set of practices. Instead, the authors conclude, contemporary Mozambique employment relations are an example of external market pressures being channelled and moulded by the persistence of national level realities that stretch back to the colonial era. In the absence of effective institutional mechanisms, familiar conventions are likely to persist because people know how these work in practice.

This is a study of horizontal and vertical solidarity within a national labour movement, based on a nationwide survey of members of affiliated unions of the Congress of South African Trade Unions. On the one hand, the survey reveals relatively high levels of vertical and horizontal solidarity, despite the persistence of some cleavages on gender and racial lines. On the other hand, the maintenance and deepening of existing horizontal and vertical linkages in a rapidly changing socio-economic context, represents one of many challenges facing organized labour in an industrializing economy. COSATU's strength is contingent not only on an effective organizational capacity, and a supportive network linking key actors and interest groupings, but also on the ability to meet the concerns of existing constituencies and those assigned to highly marginalized categories of labour.

Although the literature on comparative capitalism has been expanded to encompass the Mixed Market Economies (MMEs) of the Mediterranean world and other less mature institutional arrangements, it can be argued that more attention needs to be accorded to internal diversity within capitalist archetypes and the nature and path of change. In focusing on the latter, this paper explores changes in Industrial relations (Ir) regulation and practice in Greece which, since the onset of the economic crisis, has shifted towards lighter regulation; however, liberalization has not meant convergence with the mature Liberal Market Economy (LME) model and its presumed associated complementarities. Based on current developments and advances in the literature on comparative capitalism, this study explores the process and dynamics of institutional change, and the long continuities that set Greece apart from both ‘disorganized’ LMEs and other MMEs. This encompasses issues such as the composition of elites, the nature of institutional path dependence and change, and the uneven and partial nature of what constitutes institutional functionality. Whilst the Greek system is commonly condemned as dysfunctional, it satisfies specific economic interests. Being impelled in one direction by a progressive movement from below, it is driven in another by external pressures, and, at home, by “unpatriotic” elites, who have little interest in stronger regulation, and may well be served by weaker governmental capabilities. As local economic elites seek to reposition themselves within the system in order to cope with shifts in the capitalist economy, it may result in them further narrowing their focus onto their own immediate concerns accommodated through economic liberalization. Smaller, marginal, players may be pushed further out of the system and/or actively choose to withdraw, the attempts of the present government to ameliorate the shocks of liberalization notwithstanding. This vests the organized labour and other civil society associations with great historic importance.