Developing a strong theoretical base for research and practice in industrial relations and human resource management has to date remained a largely unfulfilled challenge. This text presents contributions from 15 scholars, developing their perspectives on work and the employment relationship.

Thoroughly updated and revised by a team of international experts, this fifth edition continues to be the most authoritative and accessible overview of industrial relations practices around the world.

'Besides a well-written introduction by the two editors, the book presents seventeen other chapters, some by well-known writers on the subject or related social sciences. . . This is a substantial resource book for scholars and students of comparative ER, especially for those who look towards the evolution of ER in the new economic world that is in formation, and in a comparative perspective. . . the book contains intellectually stimulating analyses of employee relations realities across the globe. . . Scholars belonging to different disciplinary perspectives, from which ER has been studied in the past, will also find in it a good reference material of comparative analyses. . . The publishers too deserve accolades for their professionalism and first rate copy-editing and production.' – Debi S. Saini, Vision – the Journal of Business Perspectives 'The book is a comprehensive volume of studies on employment relations in a wide variety of settings. . .an enriching compendium.' – Silvia Florea, Management of Sustainable Development The Research Handbook of Comparative Employment Relations is an essential resource for those seeking to understand contemporary developments in the world of work, and the way in which employment relations systems are evolving around the world. Special consideration is given to the impact of globalisation and the role of multinational corporations, including their consequences for the fate of workers' rights under existing national systems of employment relations (ER) regulation. This Handbook is unique in taking an explicitly comparative approach by discussing ER developments through a series of paired country comparisons. These chapters include a wide selection of countries from all regions, looking beyond those that are frequently discussed. The expert contributors also examine comparative issues from a range of perspectives, including industrial and employment relations, political economy, comparative politics, and cross-cultural studies. These impressive features make this important reference tool the most comprehensive of its kind. Academics and students in final-year undergraduate and postgraduate courses interested in employment relations will find this compendium enriching and insightful.

One of the major purposes of this book is to help clarify the term "industrial relations" and thus to assist meaningful discussion about the strengths and deficiencies of the body of thought to which it refers. The editors' premise is that industrial relations is a multinational field whose disciples should be seeking principles that apply over the broadest span of time and space. Contributors include Roy J. Adams, Jack Barbash, Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Braham Dabscheck, John Godard, Steve M. Hills, Kevin Hince, Thomas Kochan, Viateur Larouche and Michel Audet, Craig R. Littler, Noah M. Meltz, Michael Poole, Paula Voos, and Hoyt Wheeler, with an introduction by Roy J. Adams.

Comprises 16 chapters subsumed under four major subject areas: unions, collective bargaining and dispute resolution; human resources management; labour market research; and the regulation of labour- management relations

Bruce Kaufman provides a detailed exploration of the historical development of the field of industrial relations. He identifies two distinct schools of thought evident since the field's origins in the 1920s, one centered in the study of personnel management and the other in the study of institutional labor economics. The two schools advocate contrasting approaches to the resolution of labor problems. Kaufman traces their development from a golden age in the 1950s through a period of gradual decline that accelerated in the 1980s. He contends that, in the process, the field narrowed from a broad-based consideration of the employment relationship to a more limited focus on collective bargaining.