Well-managed employment relationships can be a secret to business success, yet this factor is relatively poorly understood when it comes to small and medium-sized enterprises (SME’s). Written by active researchers with teaching experience, this book brings together the fields of entrepreneurship and human resource management for the first time, providing entrepreneurship students with a solid grounding in HRM as well as a platform for further critical engagement with the research. The concise and authoritative style also enables the book to be used as a primer for researchers exploring this under-developed terrain. As the only student-focused specialist book on human resource management in entrepreneurial firms, this is vital reading for students and researchers in this area, as well as those interested in small business and management more generally.

Reference is often made to small companies, but little is known about them, especially regarding industrial relations. How can small companies be defined? Is their small size a sufficient feature for them to be considered the same? If they are different from each other, what makes them so? Is the distinction between them and other companies - big ones - relevant? In what way is life organised in such units, where employer and employees are in very close contact with each other? In order to answer these questions, the authors of this innovative book carried out surveys together in France, Sweden and Germany. They met employers, employees, union members and industrial relations specialists. Comparisons of these three national cases show that small companies do have common features that transcend frontiers. They do, however, also have national characteristics. They, therefore, warrant being analysed and understood in something other than merely negative terms. It thus appears that small companies are not so far off resembling big ones...

Originally published in 1989, this book analyses the economic and political position of the small firm in the 1980s, and in particular the relationship between small and large firms in an advanced capitalist economy. Focusing on the printing and clothing industries, it examines the industrial relation practices in these two contrasting sectors and shows that apparent industrial relations harmony – for example, the lack of strikes – should be put down to the powerlessness of the workforce rather than to contentment.

Capitalism, the State and Industrial Relations (1982) examines the many different forms of state intervention in industrial relations in Britain, among them being corporatism, liberalism, paternalism and pluralism. This discussion puts forward a sociological explanation of some of the determinants of state intervention. It concentrates on the period since 1960 and on policies such as those embodied in the Industrial Relations Act of 1971 and the Employment Protection Act of 1975. Institutional changes, such as the formation of the Commission on Industrial Relations and of the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, are also considered. With this in view, this book examines the relationship between class structure, class conflict and state power. The role and influence of organised labour and the industrial working class on the formulation of policy are assessed in order to clarify the social forces constraining and shaping the intervention of the state in industrial relations. One crucial conclusion to emerge is a sceptical assessment of the possibilities for the establishment of a successful corporatist control of industrial relations by means of the state in Britain.

Since 1990, foreign direct investment (FDI) has quickened economic modernization in Central Europe. State of the art management techniques and cutting edge technology have been introduced in many cases. Labour Relations is an essential factor in the organization of labour and production. At the start of the process industrial relations were characterized by the conditions existing under the previous planned economies or - as with "greenfield" investments - had to be entirely reconfigured. In the case of investments by West European companies, this book reveals various emerging models of industrial relations but also a clear tendency towards company centralization. For the time being the European Works Council still plays a subordinate role despite its potential fundamental role as mediator between East and West. Empirically nine corporations from the metal/automotive industry, the chemical, energy and food processing industries (with their subsidiaries in Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia) are considered.

In the twentieth century, large companies employing many workers formed the bedrock of the U.S. economy. Today, on the list of big business's priorities, sustaining the employer-worker relationship ranks far below building a devoted customer base and delivering value to investors. As David Weil's groundbreaking analysis shows, large corporations have shed their role as direct employers of the people responsible for their products, in favor of outsourcing work to small companies that compete fiercely with one another. The result has been declining wages, eroding benefits, inadequate health and safety protections, and ever-widening income inequality. From the perspectives of CEOs and investors, fissuring--splitting off functions that were once managed internally--has been phenomenally successful. Despite giving up direct control to subcontractors and franchises, these large companies have figured out how to maintain the quality of brand-name products and services, without the cost of maintaining an expensive workforce. But from the perspective of workers, this strategy has meant stagnation in wages and benefits and a lower standard of living. Weil proposes ways to modernize regulatory policies so that employers can meet their obligations to workers while allowing companies to keep the beneficial aspects of this business strategy.