The Oxford Handbook of Employment Relations

There have been numerous accounts exploring the relationship between institutions and firm practices. However, much of this literature tends to be located into distinct theoretical-traditional 'silos', such as national business systems, social systems of production, regulation theory, or varieties of capitalism, with limited dialogue between different approaches to enhance understanding of institutional effects. Again, evaluations of the relationship between institutions and employment relations have tended to be of the broad-brushstroke nature, often founded on macro-data, and with only limited attention being accorded to internal diversity and details of actual practice. The Handbook aims to fill this gap by bringing together an assembly of comprehensive and high quality chapters to enable understanding of changes in employment relations since the early 1970s. Theoretically-based chapters attempt to link varieties of capitalism, business systems, and different modes of regulation to the specific practice of employment relations, and offer a truly comparative treatment of the subject, providing frameworks and empirical evidence for understanding trends in employment relations in different parts of the world. Most notably, the Handbook seeks to incorporate at a theoretical level regulationist accounts and recent work that link bounded internal systemic diversity with change, and, at an applied level, a greater emphasis on recent applied evidence, specifically dealing with the employment contract, its implementation, and related questions of work organization. It will be useful to academics and students of industrial relations, political economy, and management.1. Introduction: Comparative Employment Systems ; SECTION I: DEFINING THE FIELD ; 2. Institutions and Employment Relations ; 3. Convergence and Divergence in Employment Relations ; SECTION II: INSTITUTIONS AND EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS ALTERNATIVE ACCOUNTS, NEW INSIGHTS ; 4. Getting down to business: Varieties of Capitalism and Employment Relations ; 5. Business Systems Theory and Employment Relations ; 6. Developments and Extensions of Regulation Theory and Employment Relations ; 7. Capitalist Diversity, Work and Employment Relations ; 8. Ownership Rights and Employment Relations. ; 9. Varrieties of Institutional Theory in Comparative Employment Relations ; 10. Institutions and the Industrial Relations Tradition ; 11. Conflict, Order and Change ; SECTION III: COMPARATIVE EVIDENCE ; 12. Liberal Markets ; 13. Social Democratic Capitalism ; 14. Employment Regimes , Wage Setting and Monetary Union in Continental Europe ; 15. Continuity and Change in Asian Employment Systems: A Comparison of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan ; 16. Economies Undergoing Long Transition: Employment Relations in Central and Eastern Europe ; 17. Employment relations in Africa ; 18. The Left Turn in Latin America: Consequences for Employment Relations ; 19. Developing Societies: Asia ; 20. Employment Relations in the BRICs Countries ; SECTION IV: SUBSTANTIVE THEMES ; 21. Globalization and Labour Market Governance ; 22. Work, Bodies, Care: Gender and Employment in a Global World ; 23. Where Are the Voices? New Directions in Voice and Engagement Across the Globe ; 24. Insecure Employment: Diversity and Change ; 25. The Migration-Development Nexus, Women Workers and Transnational Employment Relations ; 26. The Neo-liberal Turn and the Implications for Labour ; SECTION V: REFLECTIONS ; 27. The State and Employment Relations ; 28. Unions ; 29. Institutions, Management Strategies and HRM ; 30. New Actors in Employment Relations ; 31. The Future of Employment Relations in Advanced Capitalism: Inexorable Decline?