From award-winning economic historian Sanford M. Jacoby, a fascinating and important study of the labor movement and shareholder capitalism Since the 1970s, American unions have shrunk dramatically, as has their economic clout. Labor in the Age of Finance traces the search for new sources of power, showing how unions turned financialization to their advantage. Sanford Jacoby catalogs the array of allies and finance-based tactics labor deployed to stanch membership losses in the private sector. By leveraging pension capital, unions restructured corporate governance around issues like executive pay and accountability. In Congress, they drew on their political influence to press for corporate reforms in the wake of business scandals and the financial crisis. The effort restrained imperial CEOs but could not bridge the divide between workers and owners. Wages lagged behind investor returns, feeding the inequality identified by Occupy Wall Street. And labor's slide continued. A compelling blend of history, economics, and politics, Labor in the Age of Finance explores the paradox of capital bestowing power to labor in the tumultuous era of Enron, Lehman Brothers, and Dodd-Frank.

Deftly blending social and business history with economic analysis, "Employing Bureaucracy" shows how the American workplace shifted from a market-oriented system to a bureaucratic one over the course of the 20th century. Jacoby explains how an unstable, haphazard employment relationship evolved into one that was more enduring, equitable, and career-oriented. This revised edition presents a new analysis of recent efforts to re-establish a market orientation in the workplace.
This book is a definitive history of the human resource management profession in the United States, showing its diverse roots in engineering, welfare work, and vocational guidance. It explores the recurring tension between the new professional order and traditional line management. Using a variety of sources, Jacoby analyzes the complex relations between personnel managers, labor unions, and government from the late 19th century to the present.
"Employing Bureaucracy: "
*analyzes the origins of the modern employment relationship's distinctive features;
*combines a variety of disciplinary perspectives, from business and labor history to economics, sociology, and management;
*shows the transformation of the American workplace over the course of the 20th century, from market-oriented to bureaucratic to recent efforts to move back to a market orientation; and
*provides the single-best and most sophisticated history of the origins and development of the modern "HR" profession.
For historians, social scientists, and practitioners, this book is a readable and rewarding study. With the future of work currently under debate, it is critical that the historical process that produced the modernAmerican workplace is understood.
Read the "Workforce Management Magazine" review about "Employing Bureaucracy" at www.erlbaum.com.

Is there one best way to run the modern business corporation? What is the appropriate balance between shareholders, executives, and employees? These questions are being vigorously debated as layoffs, scandals, and restructurings rattle companies around the world. The common assumption is that globalization is merging the varieties of corporate capitalism. Yet, as this book shows, corporations in Japan and the United States are responding differently to the pressures unleashed by globalization. In "The Embedded Corporation," Sanford Jacoby traces this diversity to national differences in economic history and social norms, and, paradoxically, to global competition itself.

The book's vantage point for exploring the varieties of capitalism is the human resource departments of large corporations, where changes in markets and technology turn into corporate labor policies affecting millions of workers. Despite some cross-fertilization, Japanese and American corporations maintain distinctive approaches to human resource management, which has important consequences for how firms compete, for corporate governance, and even for the level of inequality in Japan and the United States.

"The Embedded Corporation" is a major contribution to our understanding of comparative management and the relationship between business, society, and the global economy.

The new international economy is today the single most important factor shaping relations between employers, unions, and governments in the world's advanced industrial societies. While companies compete in global markets with firms around the world, workers remain fixed in each country and are influenced by local customs and institutions. mores. This book explores how globalization affects the contemporary workplace and how workplace policies can make nations more internationally competitive. Unlike other country-by-country treatments of the subject, this analysis compares and contrasts the experiences of different nations around important developments, such as the labor market consequences of regional trading pacts, the international diffusion of new forms of work organization, and the strategies that nations are pursuing to keep their work systems competitive. The contributors come from a variety of disciplines but all bear expertise in international industrial relations.