British Journal of Industrial Relations

Publisher:: Wiley
Publication date:: 2021-02-01

ISBN:: 0007-1080

Issue Number

Latest documents

Developing Positive Employment Relations: International Experiences of Labour Management Partnership, edited by Stewart Johnstone and Adrian Wilkinson. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2016, 334 pp., ISBN: 978‐1‐137‐42770‐0, £67.99, hardback.
Sex Worker Unionization: Global Developments, Challenges and Possibilities, edited by Gregor Gall. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2016, 226 pp., ISBN: 978‐1‐137‐32013‐1, $120.00, hardback.
Government Regulation of International Corporate Social Responsibility in the US and the UK: How Domestic Institutions Shape Mandatory and Supportive Initiatives
While most scholarship on corporate social responsibility (CSR) focuses on company‐level CSR initiatives, it increasingly also examines government programs for CSR. However, research on how governments contribute to CSR has mainly focused on domestic and not international CSR challenges. This literature also does not specify whether governments shape CSR through mandatory regulation or supportive initiatives. This article adopts a process‐tracing approach to determine how governments regulate international CSR. It demonstrates that the legal and political systems in the liberal market economies of the UK and the US lead to different forms of public CSR regulation — notably in the areas of labour standards in apparel and tax transparency in extractives. The UK government has been more likely to support bottom‐up collaborative multi‐stakeholder initiatives, whereas the US government has favoured top‐down mandatory regulation.
Corporate Social Responsibility and Labour Standards: Bridging Business Management and Employment Relations Perspectives
Public Service Management and Employment Relations in Europe: Emerging from the Crisis, edited by Stephen Bach and Lorenzo Bordogna. Routledge, New York and London, 2016, 328 pp, ISBN: 978‐1‐138‐85146‐7, $144, hardback.
Leveraging the Vertical: The Contested Dynamics of Sustainability Standards and Labour in Global Production Networks
Sustainability standards for tropical agriculture promise better trade and fairer labour conditions for smallholders. Recent research on labour suggests that, besides such standards, configurations of buyer–supplier relationships crucially shape economic and labour conditions. However, a static configurational approach overlooks the role of supplier and labour agency over time. Using a matched case comparison of two certified rural enterprises in Ecuador, this article shows that suppliers can leverage standards to create value from vertical relationships with buyers. However, standards do not, by themselves, directly contribute to better conditions. They do so indirectly only if suppliers manage to become competitive in an elite market, augmenting rather than dampening unequal trade conditions. This study contributes to recent theory seeking to explain uneven labour outcomes with sustainability standards in global production networks.
Short‐Time Work and Employment Stability: Evidence from a Policy Change
This paper investigates whether short‐time work (STW) programmes achieve their stated goal of being devices intended to preserve jobs and keep workers employed in times of crisis. Our identification strategy exploits a change in the financial incentives provided to employers and employees for the temporary suspension of work contracts or the reduction of working time. We use longitudinal administrative data and estimate difference‐in‐differences regressions and instrumental variable bivariate probit models with endogenous covariates, which try to take account of the potential endogeneity of participation in STW. Our results suggest that discretionary policy changes in the incentives of STW schemes can be effective in the short run but they lose their ability when the decline in demand and the lack of work are more permanent.
Globalization and Labour in the Twenty‐First Century, by Verity Burgmann. Routledge, Oxford, 2016, 262 pp., ISBN: 9780415528535, Price £100, hardback.
No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age, by Jane F. McAlevey. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016, 272 pp., ISBN: 9780190624712, £22.99, hardback.
Yearning to Labor: Youth, Unemployment, and Social Destiny in Urban France, by John P. Murphy. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, 2017, 294 pp., ISBN: 9780803294974, Price £39.00, hardback.