Employee participation encompasses the range of mechanisms used to involve the workforce in decisions at all levels of the organization--whether direct or indirect--conducted with employees or through their representatives. In its various guises, the topic of employee participation has been a recurring theme in industrial relations and human resource management. One of the problems in trying to develop any analysis of participation is that there is potentially limited overlap between these different disciplinary traditions, and scholars from diverse traditions may know relatively little of the research that has been done elsewhere. Accordingly in this book, a number of the more significant disciplinary areas are analyzed in greater depth in order to ensure that readers gain a better appreciation of what participation means from these quite different contextual perspectives.
Not only is there a range of different traditions contributing to the research and literature on the subject, there is also an extremely diverse sets of practices that congregate under the banner of participation. The handbook discusses various arguments and schools of thought about employee participation, analyzes the range of forms that participation can take in practice, and examines the way in which it meets objectives that are set for it, either by employers, trade unions, individual workers, or, indeed, the state.
In doing so, the handbook brings together leading scholars from around the world who present and discuss fundamental theories and approaches to participation in organization as well as their connection to broader political forces. These selections address the changing contexts of employee participation, different cultural/ institutional models, old/'new' economy models, shifting social and political patterns, and the correspondence between industrial and political democracy and participation.
About the Series
Oxford Handbooks in Business & Management bring together the world's leading scholars on the subject to discuss current research and the latest thinking in a range of interrelated topics including Strategy, Organizational Behavior, Public Management, International Business, and many others. Containing completely new essays with extensive referencing to further reading and key ideas, the volumes, in hardback or paperback, serve as both a thorough introduction to a topic and a useful desk reference for scholars and advanced students alike.

An updated edition of a groundbreaking work on the global financial crisis from a postfordist perspective. The 2010 English-language edition of Christian Marazzi's The Violence of Financial Capitalism made a groundbreaking work on the global financial crisis available to an expanded readership. This new edition has been updated to reflect recent events, up to and including the G20 summit in July 2010 and the broad consensus to reduce government spending that emerged from it. Marazzi, a leading figure in the European postfordist movement, argues that the processes of financialization are not simply irregularities between the traditional categories of wages, rent, and profit, but rather a new type of accumulation adapted to the processes of social and cognitive production today. The financial crisis, he contends, is a fundamental component of contemporary accumulation and not a classic lack of economic growth. Marazzi shows that individual debt and the management of financial markets are actually techniques for governing the transformations of immaterial labor, general intellect, and social cooperation. The financial crisis has radically undermined the very concept of unilateral and multilateral economico-political hegemony, and Marazzi discusses efforts toward a new geomonetary order that have emerged around the globe in response. Offering a radically new understanding of the current stage of international economics as well as crucial post-Marxist guidance for confronting capitalism in its newest form, The Violence of Financial Capitalism is a valuable addition to the contemporary arsenal of postfordist thought. This edition includes the glossary of the esoteric neolanguage of financial capitalism-"Words in Crisis," from "AAA" to "toxic asset"-written for the first English-language edition, and offers a new afterword by Marazzi.

Heroic Defeats is a comparative investigation of how unions and firms interact when economic circumstances require substantial job loss. Using simple game theory to generate testable propositions about when these situations will result in industrial conflict, Professor Golden illustrates the theory in a range of situations between 1950 and 1985 in Japan, Italy, and Britain. Additionally, the author shows how the theory explains why strikes over job loss almost never occur in postwar unionised firms in the United States. With its blend of rational choice and comparative politics, Heroic Defeats is the first systematic attempt to account for industrial conflict or its absence in situations of mass job loss. This book should be of interest to political scientists, sociologists, economists, and students of labour and industrial relations, as well as specialists in European and Japanese history.

The 1970s are of particular relevance for understanding the socio-economic changes still shaping Western societies today. The collapse of traditional manufacturing industries like coal and steel, shipbuilding, and printing, as well as the rise of the service sector, contributed to a notable sense of decline and radical transformation. Building on the seminal work of Lutz Raphael and Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, Nach dem Boom, which identified a "social transformation of revolutionary quality" that ushered in "digital financial capitalism," this volume features a series of essays that reconsider the idea of a structural break in the 1970s. Contributors draw on case studies from France, the Netherlands, the UK, the US, and Germany to examine the validity of the "after the boom" hypothesis. Since the Boom attempts to bridge the gap between the English and highly productive German debates on the 1970s.

This comprehensive textbook provides an introduction to collective bargaining and labor relations with a focus on developments in the United States. It is appropriate for students, policy analysts, and labor relations professionals including unionists, managers, and neutrals. A three-tiered strategic choice framework unifies the text, and the authors' thorough grounding in labor history and labor law assists students in learning the basics. In addition to traditional labor relations, the authors address emerging forms of collective representation and movements that address income inequality in novel ways. Harry C. Katz, Thomas A. Kochan, and Alexander J. S. Colvin provide numerous contemporary illustrations of business and union strategies. They consider the processes of contract negotiation and contract administration with frequent comparisons to nonunion practices and developments, and a full chapter is devoted to special aspects of the public sector. An Introduction to U.S. Collective Bargaining and Labor Relations has an international scope, covering labor rights issues associated with the global supply chain as well as the growing influence of NGOs and cross-national unionism. The authors also compare how labor relations systems in Germany, Japan, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa compare to practices in the United States. The textbook is supplemented by a website (ilr.cornell.edu/scheinman-institute) that features an extensive Instructor's Manual with a test bank, PowerPoint chapter outlines, mock bargaining exercises, organizing cases, grievance cases, and classroom-ready current events materials.

Employee participation encompasses the range of mechanisms used to involve the workforce in decisions at all levels of the organization - whether direct or indirect - conducted with employees or through their representatives. In its various guises, the topic of employee participation has been a recurring theme in industrial relations and human resource management. One of the problems in trying to develop any analysis of participation is that there is potentially limited overlap between these different disciplinary traditions, and scholars from diverse traditions may know relatively little of the research that has been done elsewhere. Accordingly in this book, a number of the more significant disciplinary areas are analysed in greater depth in order to ensure that readers gain a better appreciation of what participation means from these quite different contextual perspectives.
Not only is there a range of different traditions contributing to the research and literature on the subject, there is also an extremely diverse sets of practices that congregate under the banner of participation. The handbook discusses various arguments and schools of thought about employee participation, analyzes the range of forms that participation can take in practice, and examines the way in which it meets objectives that are set for it, either by employers, trade unions, individual workers, or, indeed, the state.
In doing so, the Handbook brings together leading scholars from around the world who present and discuss fundamental theories and approaches to participation in organization as well as their connection to broader political forces. These selections address the changing contexts of employee participation, different cultural/ institutional models, old/'new' economy models, shifting social and political patterns, and the correspondence between industrial and political democracy and participation.

Interest-Based Bargaining: A User's Guide provides a detailed account of why it makes sense to negotiate on the basis of interests rather than positions. It provides a detailed set of guidelines for negotiators who wish to develop a cooperative, problem solving approach to their bargaining. It draws on the experiences of using interest-based approaches in the USA and Ireland.
Interest-based bargaining is an approach to collective bargaining that is focused on understanding the interests of parties and on building solutions around these. It uses problem-solving tools such as brainstorming, flip charting and consensus decision-making. This book will be of particular value to management and union representatives who are already working in a cooperative way and who wish to deepen that cooperation.

Athens, Ohio--Robert Smith uncovered the sordid practices and the extent of a uniquely American industry by reading the subpoenaed documents of strikebound companies and their mercenary strikebreakers, by digging through newspaper archives for articles on long-forgotten strikes, and by studying the testimony of executives and strikebreakers who appeared before private, state, and federal governmental inquiries. Smith describes incidents, often bloody, involving strikebreakers in industrial, transportation, and mining disputes across the nation--including infamous or revealing strikes in California, Colorado, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, and West Virginia. While the activities of such hired guns are occasionally touched upon in broader studies, or in accounts of specific strikes, the lack of primary evidence has made a thorough examination of this industry difficult. Many of the earliest anti-union entrepreneurs carried their offices in their hats, and their secretive nature and the business community's efforts to disassociate itself from these often-unsavory characters left little for historians to record. As the United States became an industrial power after the Civil War, much of the business community steadfastly resisted labor's efforts to bargain collectively. The judicial system, police and other militia forces, as well as government authorities, historically have helped anti-union employers cow workers and maintain their dominance. The role played by anti-union entrepreneurs, however, was obscured until the 1950s. Workers first challenged this heirarchy in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877--an uprising thatspurred creation of the National Guard--and industrial violence did not significantly abate until the federal government sanctioned collective bargaining with the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935. In response, unionbusters became increasingly more sophisticated and more subtle. Pinkerton hired-guns gave way to professional strikebreakers who many regarded as defenders of American economic liberty. Wary of antagonizing the public, these armies of hired muscle were superseded in turn by undercover men--who were eventually replaced by experts in the nuances of national labor law. Emboldened by President Reagan's busting in 1981 of the air traffic controllers and the pro-business milieu of the post-Reagan years, professional union-busting came full circle. Smith says the newest breed of anti-union entrepreneurs rely upon thugs who differ little from the brutal men who filled the armies marshaled by the Pinkertons, the notorious Baldwin Felts Agency, or even the "King of the Strikebreakers," Pearl Bergoff, nearly a century ago. Since the mid-1980s, hundreds of firms--including the Detroit News, Caterpillar and Pittston Coal--when facing angry workers have contracted with agencies that promise to solve their labor troubles. While some supply their clients with replacement workers, others (like the Asset Protection Team or Special Response Corporation, which promise to provide frightened employers "A Private Army When you Need it Most") specialize in security services. Reproductions of such advertisements, and photographs, some shocking, of strikebreakers and their tactics are an important dimension of Smith's book. "In no other country has the struggle between management and its employeesengendered a contingent of mercenaries who specialized in breaking strikes," observes Smith. Surprisingly, students of the American labor story have paid little attention to strikebreaking and unionbusting agencies. FROM BLACKJACKS TO BRIEFCASES breaks important new ground in fully documenting companies' long reliance upon anti-labor specialists--an important factor in the puzzle of the failure of the American labor movement. This revealing study challenges journalists, scholars, and labor historians to look further into how the business community in the United States has relied upon mercenaries for a century and a half.

In May 1914, workers walked off their jobs at Atlanta's Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills, launching a lengthy strike that was at the heart of the American Federation of Labor's first major attempt to organize southern workers in over a decade. In its celebrity, the Fulton Mills strike was the regional contemporary of the well-known industrial conflicts in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and Ludlow, Colorado. Although ultimately unsuccessful, the strike was an important episode in the development of the New South, and as Clifford Kuhn demonstrates, its story sheds light on the industrialization, urbanization, and modernization of the region.

Drawing on an extraordinary collection of sources--including reports from labor spies and company informants, photographs, federal investigations, oral histories, and newly uncovered records from the old mill's vaults--Kuhn vividly depicts the strike and the community in which it occurred. He also chronicles the struggle for public opinion that ensued between management, workers, union leaders, and other interested parties. Finally, Kuhn reflects on the legacy of the strike in southern history, exploring its complex ties to the evolving New South.

"People thrive on conflict in most areas of their lives--football games, political debates, legal disputes--yet steer clear from workplace conflicts.

But conflict is actually a healthy way to challenge the existing order and essential to change in the workplace. The real problem is not conflict "per se," but "managing" conflict.

This authoritative manual explains step by step how to design a complete conflict resolution system and develop the skills to implement it. Packed with exercises, case studies, and checklists, the book also supplies:

* an overview of workplace conflict

* diagnostic tools for measuring it

* techniques for resolving conflict, such as negotiation, labor/management partnerships, third-party dispute resolution, mediation, arbitration, more."

International Paper, the richest paper company and largest landowner in the United States, enjoyed record profits and gave large bonuses to executives in 1987, that same year the company demanded that employees take a substantial paycut, sacrifice hundreds of jobs, and forego their Christmas holiday. At the Adroscoggin Mill in Jay, Maine, twelve hundred workers responded by going on strike from June 1987 to October 1988. Local union members mobilized an army of volunteers but International Paper brought in permanent replacement workers and the strike was ultimately lost. Julius G. Getman tells the story of that strike and its implications a story of a community changing under pressure; of surprising leaders, strategists, and orators emerging; of lifelong friendships destroyed and new bonds forged. At a time when the role of organized labor is in transition, Getman suggests, this strike has particular significance. He documents the early negotiations, the battle for public opinion, the heroic efforts to maintain solidarity, and the local union's sense of betrayal by its national leadership. With exceptional richness in perspective, Getman includes the memories and informed speculations of union stalwarts, managers, and workers, including those who crossed the picket line, and shows the damage years later to the individuals, the community, and the mill. He demonstrates the law's bias, the company's undervaluing of employees, and the international union's excessive concern with internal politics."

This book explicitly addresses racism in the paid workplace, showing how racism, and by corollary sexism, are systemic to society. Based on extensive research on workers in both the Health Care sector and in the Garment Manufacturing sector, the author succeeds in capturing the daily lived realities in the workplace.

How the brutalities of working life are transformed into exhaustion, shame, and self-doubt: a writer's account of her experience working in an Amazon fulfillment center. No longer able to live on the proceeds of her freelance writing and translating income, German novelist Heike Geissler takes a seasonal job at Amazon Order Fulfillment in Leipzig. But the job, intended as a stopgap measure, quickly becomes a descent into humiliation, and Geissler soon begins to internalize the dynamics and nature of the post-capitalist labor market and precarious work. Driven to work at Amazon by financial necessity rather than journalistic ambition, Heike Geissler has nonetheless written the first and only literary account of corporate flex-time employment that offers "freedom" to workers who have become an expendable resource. Shifting between the first and the second person, Seasonal Associate is a nuanced expose of the psychic damage that is an essential working condition with mega-corporations. Geissler has written a twenty-first-century account of how the brutalities of working life are transformed into exhaustion, shame, and self-doubt.

In a dramatic change of role, the noted television and film star has written a vivid and incisive account of the House Committee on Un-American Activities' probe of the entertainment industry from 1938 to 1958. Formed to investigate alleged subversives, by the late fifties the committee had succeeded in ruining the careers and sometimes the lives of many of Hollywood and Broadway's top writers and performers. Quoting generously from transcripts of its hearings, Vaughn shows how the committee's primary purpose was punitive rather than legislative, and concludes that its most serious damage to American theatre and film is not easily documented: the loss of all the words never written or spoken because of the impact - and the fear - of the committee's misdeeds.

Written to celebrate the 30th anniversary of CEDR's emergence as the world's leading independent disputes consultancy, The Mediator's Tale: The CEDR Story of Better Conflicts captures the experience of two leading internationally renowned mediators - and married couple - Eileen Carroll and Karl Mackie. Sharing their personal and professional insights into how we can achieve better conflict management in our professional and personal lives, they highlight key insights into how mediation delivers results, and lessons for conflicts generally. The book: Tells the story of how a young lawyer and a leading academic 'had the courage and sheer guts' necessary to create disruptive change and persuade the legal profession and its clients to embrace mediation Provides advisers and mediators with in-depth explanations for getting results from negotiation and independent intervention Shows how to build trust and make emotional connections while building momentum for settlement Highlights the role of women as conflict resolvers and as early pioneers in conflict resolution, and the links between conflict and diversity - 'What people often mean by getting rid of conflict is getting rid of diversity' Explores the reasons interventions fail and how to avoid failure Illuminates the international development of mediation and its reach into justice systems, human rights, investor-state disputes and international arbitration Outlines leadership skills that will put you in the top 1% of people able to deal with conflict.

An exploration of a new division of labor between machines and humans, in which people provide value to the economy with little or no compensation. The computerization of the economy-and everyday life-has transformed the division of labor between humans and machines, shifting many people into work that is hidden, poorly compensated, or accepted as part of being a "user" of digital technology. Through our clicks and swipes, logins and profiles, emails and posts, we are, more or less willingly, participating in digital activities that yield economic value to others but little or no return to us. Hamid Ekbia and Bonnie Nardi call this kind of participation-the extraction of economic value from low-cost or free labor in computer-mediated networks-"heteromation." In this book, they explore the social and technological processes through which economic value is extracted from digitally mediated work, the nature of the value created, and what prompts people to participate in the process. Arguing that heteromation is a new logic of capital accumulation, Ekbia and Nardi consider different kinds of heteromated labor: communicative labor, seen in user-generated content on social media; cognitive labor, including microwork and self-service; creative labor, from gaming environments to literary productions; emotional labor, often hidden within paid jobs; and organizing labor, made up of collaborative groups such as citizen scientists. Ekbia and Nardi then offer a utopian vision: heteromation refigured to bring end users more fully into the prosperity of capitalism.

How an alliance of the labor and environmental movements used law as a tool to clean up the trucking industry at the nation's largest port. In Blue and Green, Scott Cummings examines a campaign by the labor and environmental movements to transform trucking at America's largest port in Los Angeles. Tracing the history of struggle in an industry at the epicenter of the global supply chain, Cummings shows how an unprecedented "blue-green" alliance mobilized to improve working conditions for low-income drivers and air quality in nearby communities. The campaign for "clean trucks," Cummings argues, teaches much about how social movements can use law to challenge inequality in a global era. Cummings shows how federal deregulation created interrelated economic and environmental problems at the port and how the campaign fought back by mobilizing law at the local level. He documents three critical stages: initial success in passing landmark legislation requiring port trucking companies to convert trucks from dirty to clean and drivers from contractors to employees with full labor rights; campaign decline after industry litigation blocked employee conversion; and campaign resurgence through an innovative legal approach to driver misclassification that realized a central labor movement goal-unionizing port truckers. Appraising the campaign, Cummings analyzes the tradeoffs of using alternative legal frameworks to promote labor organizing, and explores lessons for building movements to regulate low-wage work in the "gig" economy. He shows how law can bind coalitions together and split them apart, and concludes that the fight for legal reform never ends, but rather takes different turns on the long road to justice.

This book showcases the inequalities experienced between the Global North and the Global South by exploring the production and distribution model of goods and services worldwide through an analysis of why the structure, framework, and interconnectedness of global supply chains increases the persistence of worker rights' violations. The narrative explains the power relationships between multinational corporations, their subcontractors, governments, non-governmental organizations, labor unions, and workers. The text focuses primarily on competition between workers in the Global South and the Global North who are compelled to work in global supply chains for their survival and takes a macro-look at how global supply chains operate, how they are governed, who invests and why, and who wins and who loses. From the workers' perspective, the text highlights the millions of low-wage workers who suffer exploitation and abuse at the hands of greedy multi-national corporations who are able to distance themselves from any liability for workers' welfare through an institutional system created by national/state governments, trade agreements, and tax and investment strategies which protect property rights over workers' rights. The fragile plight of workers crescendos through examples of exploitation and abuse in the fishing, mining, apparel, electronic and manufacturing industries, focusing events of workplace disasters, and slave-like working conditions, then climaxes by providing strategies to help strengthen workers through legislative and policy initiatives, collective action, and social and public pressure.

This book offers a unique contribution that examines major recent changes in conflict, negotiation and regulation within the labour relations systems and related governance institutions of advanced societies. The broad scope of analysis includes social welfare institutions, new forms of protest including judicialisation, transnational structures and collective bargaining itself. As the distinguished group of participating authors shows, the accumulation of numerous crucial changes in the interactions of unions, employers, political parties, courts, protestors, regulators and other key actors makes it imperative to reframe the study of collective bargaining and related forms of governance. The shifting dynamics include the growing relevance of multi-level interactions involving transnational entities, states and regions; the increasing tendency of workers and unions to turn to the courts as part of their overall strategy; new forms of solidarity among workers; and the emergence of new populist and nationalist actors. At the same time, sectors of the workforce that feel under-represented by existing institutions have contributed to new types of protest and 'agency'. Building on classical debates, the book offers new theoretical and practical approaches that insert the study of collective bargaining into the analysis of governance, solidarity, conflict and regulation, as they are broadly construed.