Across Boundaries: The Global Challenges Facing Workers and Employment Research
| Published date | 01 September 2013 |
| Date | 01 September 2013 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12039 |
Across Boundaries: The Global
Challenges Facing Workers and
Employment Research
Gregory Jackson, Sarosh Kuruvilla and
Carola Frege
Abstract
The overall complexity of employment relations today raises new challenges for
scholars to extend their work across the boundaries of particular geographies,
organizations, theoretical perspectives and disciplines. To celebrate the 50th
anniversary of the British Journal of Industrial Relations, this article intro-
duces key aspects of global challenges facing employees and research on
employment relations. Drawing on the articles of this anniversary issue, we
identify several theoretical concepts drawn from the wider social sciences that
have proven useful in understanding global challenges around global value
chains, transnational and multi-level institutional frameworks, and the role of
global finance. We also identify and discuss the emergence of new actors that
have a growing salience for global employment research and the establishment
of more global forms of worker representation. By further developing theoreti-
cal concepts around these global challenges, we argue that employment rela-
tions research will increase its dialogue with and distinctive contribution to
wider debates in the social sciences.
1. Introduction
In the editorial of the inaugural issue of the BJIR in 1963, founding editor
Ben Roberts noted that the object of the journal is to ‘promote a better
understanding of the nature of problems that are complex, shifting and
difficult to resolve successfully’ and that ‘great importance is attached by the
editors to studies of a comparative nature’. Indeed, the lead article in
the inaugural issue was devoted to an analysis of social and labour policy in
Gregory Jackson is at the Freie Universität Berlin. Sarosh Kuruvilla is at the Cornell University.
Carola Frege is at the London School of Economics.
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British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/bjir.12039
51:3 September 2013 0007–1080 pp. 425–439
© John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics 2013. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
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