Workplace relations: past, present and future.

Abstract:

This paper briefly describes and explains a research trajectory that spans 25 years and provides some pointers f or future research. Three sets of studies are addressed and organised thematically. The theme of the first research program is industrial conflict and accommodation, and the settings include strike-prone industries in Britain and Australia in the decade, 1973-83. The second set of studies addresses the theme of globalisation and the impact of multinational corporations on workplace relations. Relevant settings include countries in Africa, Europe and especially Asia in the period, 1994-2002. The third research program has the informational economy as its theme. This includes an emphasis on computer technology, services and knowledge work. The research focus is on workplace relations in customer-contact service firms, and in new industries such as biotechnology and software development that are particularly dependent on innovation.

Keywords:

MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS; WORKPLACE RELATIONS; GLOBALISATION; INFORMATIONAL ECONOMY; CODES OF LABOUR PRACTICE; KNOWLEDGE WORK; SERVICE WORK.

1. Introduction

Workplace relations are both an expression of wider economic, political and social forces and a major influence on the life chances of most adults. These patterns of management-worker relationships vary between societies from highly conflictual to strongly cooperative and tend to change over time. Persistent research themes include detailed description and characterisation of these relations, identification of factors and processes promoting order and conflict, and associated consequences for both management and workers (Fox 1974; Lincoln & Kalleberg 1990; Osterman & Kochan 1994).

Several factors that lie beyond and within the workplace have been used to explain variations in workplace relations patterns. These include changes in labour and product markets, political tendencies and institutional processes, technological and organisational change, and management's human resource strategies and systems. A structural-interpretive approach is one way to understand workplace relations patterns. This approach emphasizes the constitution of subjectivity and relationships as shaped by social structures that are products of past interactions within and outside the workplace. The epistemological basis of this perspective is found in structuration theory (Giddens 1976). Concepts derive mainly from industrial sociology--the study of work, workers and the structure and processes of control--and industrial relations--the study of rules, norms and procedures for regulating management-worker relations. This approach opposes post-modernists' insistence that social structures (e.g. workplaces) only exist and have any influence through the subjectivity of their constituents while sharing with critical theory the view that workplace relations is a political process and largely a product of structural factors. However, structural-interpretive sociology is not wholly committed to an emancipatory research agenda. Rather its role is to question conventional wisdom by developing insights, and generating new concepts and theory. It enables multi-level explanations that serve as hypotheses for investigations whose findings can be generalized.

The aim of this paper is to briefly discuss three sets of workplace relations studies that use a structural-interpretive approach to address controversial issues associated with changes in the balance of power within the workplace and industry more generally. The first set of studies concentrates on industrial conflict and accommodation. The settings are strike-prone industries in Britain and Australia in the decade, 1973-83. In this period, strong unions, bolstered by near full employment, were held to be the main cause of industrial unrest. Thereafter the political-economic context changed. Labour markets weakened and governments began promoting labour flexibility and decentralised bargaining. The law was used to limit collective action by workers and their unions. Meanwhile, in response to pressure on profits, multinationals expanded and management tightened control over labour costs. Multinationals relocated manufacturing to overseas subsidiaries or contracted out production to low-cost suppliers. These changes helped to resurrect in a new guise the issue of industrial relations convergence versus divergence.

Were workplace relations in different countries converging as corporate headquarters succeeded in imposing global human resource strategies on subsidiaries and suppliers? Or was divergence the stronger tendency, as managers of subsidiaries and contractor companies shaped workplace relations according to local labour institutions, laws and markets? This theme is addressed in the second set of studies undertaken in the years 1994 to 2002, a period of intense competition spurred by globalisation and quickening technological change. One part of this research focused on workplace relations of subsidiaries in different countries, the subsidiaries being part of the same multinational pharmaceutical company. The other part concentrated on contractor plants associated with leading multinational athletic shoe companies. This research explored the way international labour standards have been institutionalised as a corporate responsibility. This takes the form of codes of labour practice that comprise part of the contract between the global firms and their prime contractors. The theme of the third set of studies is knowledge work organisation. As firms move their less skilled work overseas, and as knowledge-based services replace primary and goods production as the leading sectors in the advanced societies, there is increasing reliance on new professional and, para-professional employees. What do these knowledge workers want from work? Are they satisfied and committed to their employing organisations? How effectively are they managed? This research is on-going, however the findings of one major study are briefly discussed.

Overall, the studies referred to in this paper make three kinds of contribution to the literature: they generate concepts that illuminate workplace developments; they provide arguments that challenge existing views and hence stimulate debate; and, this work provides both an inspiration to extend similar research in comparable settings and constitutes a basis for theory construction and hypothesis testing. The paper is organised chronologically concluding with a summary of key past and present research findings and a brief commentary on the emerging informational economy including some pointers toward further studies of workplace relations.

2. Conflict and Accommodation on the Shop-Floor: Sources and Characteristics

In the 1970s the British auto industry attracted increasing attention as a major export-earner and source of new employment. Low unemployment coupled with a strongly institutionalised union movement contributed to high inflation with wages chasing prices. Strikes were commonplace and left-wing trade union leaders were cast as `mindless militants'. However, it was `bloody-minded' shop stewards (workplace union representatives) that attracted most media and academic attention. Industrial relations scholars attributed the problem to institutional failure, in particular, the absence of workplace procedures capable of regulating conflict. With the help of changes in government policy, and legislation limiting union power, management were expected to drive workplace reform. Our study aimed to discover what exactly was happening on the shop-floor in a conflict-prone workplace, and in particular, how full-time union officials, shop stewards and management interacted in this kind of workplace.

We spent six months exploring workplace relations in a typical vehicle plant located in the Midlands, the heartland of the UK auto industry. Based on theory drawn from sociology, industrial relations and political science, our research relied on anthropological techniques (e.g. observation and network analysis). Two publications--Shop Stewards in Action (Batstone, Boraston & Frenkel 1977) and The Social Organization of Strikes (Batstone, Boraston & Frenkel 1978)--explored the worlds of shop stewards, their `vocabularies of motive,' their differences, and the ways in which some types of stewards attempted to develop a unified body that often acted as a restraining influence on their colleagues. We also drew attention to the way some types of stewards developed bargaining relationships with management and how this had implications for their relationships with their worker constituents, and with the full-time officials of the external unions. This was a comparative analysis--comparing steward behaviour on the shop-floor with their counterparts in the offices of the same multinational.

Strikes were revealed as complex social phenomena that were difficult to define and categorise. This raised serious questions about the reliability of official statistics. We explored how strikes and other forms of industrial action (e.g. overtime bans) emerged in the two settings, why they varied in frequency, scope and instigation, and the role of the steward leadership and management in settling these disputes. The processes of micro industrial relations comprised a mixture of custom and decentralised democracy, where informality coupled with an absence of adequate training procedures for shop stewards exacerbated conflict between work groups and contributed to steward disunity. This, together with rare appearances by full-time union officials, made workers reluctant to cede too much power to their workplace representatives or to full-time union officials.

On the white-collar side, workers and unions were less powerful. This was mainly because clerical workers held a less strategic position in the production process, they worked more closely with managers, and there were more opportunities to earn more and be promoted through individual effort. Our analysis also revealed disorder within management. This resulted from unstable market and supplier relations, limited social skills on the part of managers, and an unwillingness to control powerful shop-floor work groups and their stewards. Decentralised management structures coupled with a soft product market allowed costs to be passed on to customers. In short, our studies suggested that existing explanations of workplace disorder were overly simplistic. At the heart of our argument was a paradox: unions were not too strong but in fact too weak: frequent, work group strikes were a consequence of their limited authority to control their constituents. Management had the power but lacked the vision and the will to reassert control over workplace relations.

Concepts generated by the research included new typologies of stewards and forms of industrial action respectively. Distinctions were made between `leader' and `populist' stewards that had a strong bearing on worker behaviour (Batstone et al. 1977, pp. 99-130) and especially on the frequency and characteristics of industrial action (Batstone et al. 1978, pp. 79-96). The broader the type of strike the more likely it was to be led by `leader' stewards. The most frequent, narrower, work-group stoppages were typically led by populist-type stewards with leader stewards attempting to restrain such action.

Continuing with the theme of industrial conflict, the second study explored two strike-prone Australian industries--construction and metalworking. These formed the industrial base of some of the country's most militant unions. The argument was that industry characteristics and not simply national institutions and workplace structures significantly influenced the character of workplace relations. The challenge was to describe and explain how this occurred in practice. Like the UK, Australian conventional wisdom on industrial disorder was based on either agitator theory or institutional theory. However, international differences put a different spin on the arguments. In Australia, shop stewards appeared to be relatively weak, and the Communist parties more prominent, encouraged by regular, mandatory union leadership ballots, which made canvassing for official union positions more open than in UK unions. So the focus was outside the workplace, a concern with particular unions and their leaders. According to the institutionalist argument, the arbitration system entrenched conflict, encouraging workers to collectively settle their disputes by conciliation or arbitration.

Our research included observation and interviews with union officials of the Metal and Building Workers' Unions respectively over an 18-month period. We attended workplace meetings with stewards and workers and negotiating sessions with management, including conciliation and arbitration hearings. Managers were interviewed and the research drew on survey and official statistical data. In Unions Against Capitalism? (Frenkel & Coolican 1984) a complex explanation is provided to account for the conflict-prone nature of workplace relations.

Two kinds of strike were distinguished: industrial campaigns and workplace-specific disputes. The former were associated with changes to awards (analagous to industry collective agreements) in which the militant unions assumed a leadership position vis a vis other unions. The latter were most commonly instigated by one or more work groups, with union officials usually attempting to settle rather than inflame such activity (Frenkel & Coolican 1984, chapters 11-13). Militant leaders of the two unions espoused political ideologies that differed significantly from those articulated by leaders of other unions and were noticeably different from one another. Ideology influenced policies, industrial tactics, governance systems, and relations with other unions. In a nutshell, both unions adopted a proactive position in comparison to other unions who typically reacted to their members' demands. The militant unions were motivated by a desire to change society and not simply improve their members' wages and conditions. The Building Workers' Union pursued a top-down approach in line with the notion of democratic centralism favoured by the Soviet Union. The Metal Workers' Union preferred the independent European communist strategy of encouraging workers' to develop a strong, decentralised, democratic movement with limited co-ordination by union officials. These differences influenced their respective approaches to workplace relations and industrial conflict. Full-time officials of both unions were shown to act more as managers of discontent than industrial agitators, this role being shaped by having to meet the expectations of managers and workers keen to eventually settle their differences through the currency of higher pay or improved working conditions.

A multi-level explanation highlights the role of the state, especially the arbitration system, together with the characteristics of the two industries, and the reactive role of employers, as key factors exerting most influence on the incidence and nature of strikes and industrial action more generally. According to this interpretation, militant trade unionism is a consequence rather than a cause of conflict. Like the UK auto industry, strikes were concentrated in a small number of large workplaces. However, in Australia, where management discouraged workplace union organisation, the arbitration system (which centralised decisions) combined with occupational unionism (which fostered occupational rather than organisational identity), created a normative vacuum in the workplace. This was filled by powerful work groups, who used their strategic position to maximum advantage, a process most evident in the unstable, time-pressured, construction industry.

3. Globalisation and Workplace Relations in Advanced and Industrializing Societies

By the early 1980s the advanced economies were being drawn closer together by investment and trade flows. This encouraged regional political arrangements like the European Union and the North Atlantic Free Trade Alliance. These changes stimulated more comparative, international research in workplace relations (Littler 1982; Burawoy 1983). Existing analytical frameworks that framed issues in a single country context were becoming obsolescent. Based on industrial relations and industrial sociology, a new framework was developed to analyse workplace relations in Britain, France and Japan from an institutionalist-interpretive perspective (Frenkel 1986). It was argued that typical patterns of workplace relations were established by large enterprises and that national variations in workplace relations could be explained by a detailed examination of interactions between the state, employer organisations and unions in relation to large enterprises. The paper also distinguished those elements of workplace behaviour that tend to cohere and therefore be regarded as defining features of workplace relations.

In the early 1990s the term globalisation entered popular discourse. It referred to the growing interdependence of many of the advanced and rapidly industrialising economies. As part of this process, multinationals were transferring production to from plants in the advanced countries to subsidiaries or contractors in the newly industrialized and developing countries, particularly in Asia. These trends highlighted the importance of comparative international workplace analysis and posed new research questions. What did globalisation mean for workplace relations? Was it a force that buttressed management control and undermined workers' employment security? Or did it promote profitability and employment opportunities? How were workplace relations organised and how were workers motivated and regulated in subsidiary or contractor workplaces? Would globalisation herald a convergence in workplace relations as multinationals pursued continuous improvements in productivity and quality?

These issues were canvassed in a paper exploring the meaning of globalisation and its implications for companies, workers and workplace relations (Frenkel & Royal 1997). This was complemented by several empirical studies in a leading pharmaceutical corporation. Research was conducted at the US headquarters, the UK regional headquarters, and at subsidiaries in Australia, Malaysia, Taiwan, South Africa and the UK. A key finding was that workplace relations in subsidiaries of the same company, located in different countries, bore the stamp of the particular country's industrial relations institutions as reflected in the nature of trade unionism, management authority structures, and rule setting mechanisms (e.g. collective bargaining or unilateral management control). However, there were similarities in other elements--work roles, reward systems and the climate of management-employee relations. Overall, there was a tendency towards convergence on a pattern termed `cooperative dependence'--cooperation based on the declining power of workers in the face of diminishing union influence, with workers seeking greater trust in management and more participation in job-related decisions (Frenkel 1994).

More intense competition stimulated the adoption of new technology. Globalisation was changing workplace relations in ways that were as yet not well understood. This prompted three subsequent studies of multinational subsidiaries. The cooperative dependence pattern was explored further by distinguishing between Neo-Taylorist and Lean Production manufacturing variants. There was a general tendency towards the latter pattern characterized by increasing management technical expertise and systems integration, more complex work, greater employee involvement, and weak or non-existent trade unionism (Frenkel 1995). A similar finding emerged in an analysis of workplaces in the same company's UK and South African subsidiaries (Frenkel & Royal 1999). Based mainly on survey and documentary data, this study also explored differences in workers' views of management and trade unions, and traced the varying pressures for change to the plants' different positions in the company's global corporate strategy. The UK subsidiary's plant was found to be under more pressure to improve performance, as rationalization was central to the firm's European strategy. This contrasted with the South African workplace, which continued to supply a small, less important market. Consequently, change was slower and the outcomes less dramatic. This research led to the hypothesis that the pace and scope of workplace change depends mainly on the strategic position of subsidiaries in multinational companies but the content of these changes is strongly influenced by local institutional and labour market factors (Frenkel 1998).

The growth of manufacturing outsourcing in the 1990s, especially by multinationals to contractors in developing countries, pointed to the need to research relationships between firms and the impact of different types of inter-firm relations on workplace relations. The growth of production networks posed a critical question that became a cause celebre amongst consumer and human rights organisations: do multinationals exploit workers by contracting out production to third world manufacturers? And if so, what should be done about it? Leading firms began adopting codes of labour practice to set and maintain labour standards. How did these work in practice? And what were the consequences for workers and management?

These questions were addressed through an empirical analysis of two leading global sports shoe companies' relationships with their prime manufacturing contractors in China and Korea and the implementation of codes of labour practice in contractor factories. A theoretical framework integrating global commodity chain theory and a variant of institutional theory was developed to help explain similarities and differences in workplace relations (Frenkel 2001; Frenkel & Kim, unpublished). It was argued that codes of labour practice established new formal rules that met international labour standards and promoted harmonious workplace relations. However, in administering their code differently, some global firms were able to encourage the development of a modern human resource management system rather than contractors simply modifying existing authoritarian, punishment-centred systems. A subsequent study showed that differences in workplace relations between contractors to the same multinational were explained mainly by the emergence of different types of inter-firm relations--collaborative versus compliance-oriented--with the former resulting in superior outcomes for both workers (higher wages and improved conditions) and management (higher productivity and product quality) (Frenkel & Scott 2002).

4. Workplace Relations in the Informational Economies of the Advanced Societies

The transfer of manufacturing to developing countries was accompanied in the advanced countries by an accelerating trend towards a service-based economy increasingly dominated by computer technology. The so-called informational economy (Castells 1996) stimulated a reorientation of workplace analysis around information and knowledge work that was directly related to the customer or client.

A major project analysing front-line (customer contact) service, sales and knowledge workers in the strategically important financial services and telecommunications industries was launched in 1994. This study investigated the way multinationals managed these different kinds of employees in Australia, Japan and the US (Frenkel, Korczynski, Shire & Tam 1999). Detailed case studies were undertaken in fourteen workplaces. These were sites where unions were conspicuous by their absence. Qualitative techniques similar to those used in earlier research were employed to generate insights and hypotheses. And to test these hypotheses, multivariate techniques were applied to a survey of 850 workers drawn mainly from the same workplaces where the qualitative research had been undertaken.

On the Front-Line (Frenkel et al. 1999) developed a framework for studying workplace relations and proposed that work varies in complexity according to skills, creativity and type of knowledge used. Through detailed empirical research, work organisation was shown to vary with work complexity. The argument is that workplace relations form distinctive patterns comprising vertical relations (employment and control aspects) and horizontal relations (immediate worker and adjacent worker relations, and customer-worker relations). At the centre of these sets of relations are work relations--the work role and its relationship to technology. Mass customized bureaucracy--a combination of autonomous working, hierarchical control and limited teamwork but considerable customer contact--was shown to be associated with service work (see also Frenkel, Korczynski, Shire & Tam 1998). In contrast, an entrepreneurial type organisation, characterized by output controls, a high level of worker discretion and isolation from co-workers but close relationships with customers, was typical of relatively complex sales work. A more knowledge-intensive work organisation--involving teamwork, trust by senior management, high interaction between work teams, and authority based on expertise--appeared to be associated with highly complex knowledge work, for example, software development and investment analysis. These variations were held to be modified, but not substantially altered by location in different national settings. For service and knowledge workers, the quality of management-employee relations, as indicated by trust in management and satisfaction with employment conditions, was a significant predictor of job satisfaction and organisational commitment. In addition, sales workers were strongly affected by promotion prospects, job security and the extent to which work yields intrinsic satisfaction (Frenkel et al. 1999, pp. 263).

In short, the way the employment contract is implemented and interpreted remains as important to workplace performance and workers' well-being in today's informational economy as it did in the industrial era.

5. Conclusion: Making Sense of Workplaces of the Future

The research described in this paper suggests four main conclusions. First, organised conflict in some advanced societies has subsided, though the extent to which it has been replaced by committed worker cooperation rather than ambivalent accommodation is unclear. Second, unions no longer play a central role in shaping workplace relations. This raises two questions: is this condition temporary or terminal? And if terminal, as some scholars argue (Troy 1999), are workers likely to express their interests through new forms of organisation? Third, although multinationals tend to promote convergence in workplace relations between subsidiaries and between contractors, we noted several centrifugal forces that limit this tendency. These include differences in the strategic position of subsidiaries, variations in the way contractors interpret codes of labour practice, and industry difference, with frontier sectors like software and biotechnology likely to be developing forms of workplace relations quite different from traditional sectors like financial services and healthcare. Fourth, explaining workplace relations requires propositions about industry and society effects, and as globalisation proceeds, international regulatory institutions need to be included in explanations. This multi-level logic challenges human resource management models that are predicated on management's ability to shape the workplace. Management lack the power, and in any case are reluctant to trade off the benefits of higher trust and worker commitment for the perceived loss of power and status resulting from sharing control.

An emerging paradox of the informational economy is that in spite of a decline in workers' institutionalised collective power, knowledge workers' influence is increasing. This is most evident in sectors like software development and biotechnology where innovation based on knowledge and social capital is crucial for success. However, the global, informational economy generates contradictions and dilemmas that caution against any straight-forward conclusions. On the one hand, workplace relations in advanced countries are being democratised as organisations are flattened and team-based knowledge workers incorporate some managerial tasks into their work, and receive substantial stock options making them worker-owners. In addition, these workers may network to form new organisations, going even further down the worker-owner route. On the other hand, there are a growing number of `knowledge nomads'--professional and paraprofessional employees who prefer being members of an occupational community rather than having ties to any particular organisation. Some of these experts are key personnel and yet they may be excluded from strategic workplace decision-making. In addition, with the power of multinationals concentrated at global or regional headquarters, local workplaces may be sold or starved of funds, thereby emptying workplace democracy of any meaning.

Amongst less skilled employees, the number of service and sales workers is growing rapidly. Their contracts of employment usually provide for reasonable pay and job-related training in lieu of job security and career prospects with the firm. But this may not be enough. Product market trends are from standardisation to personalised customisation. The latter requires flexible, customer-oriented personnel. Management face a dilemma: offer better employment prospects in order to motivate and retain these workers--a commitment that is more costly and perhaps more difficult to meet--or outsource this work to contractors, often located in developing countries. International outsourcing limits employment prospects at home and it creates contradictions in the host economies where workers employed by foreign firms or their suppliers often have superior contracts of employment than their counterparts working in smaller, local firms. Local labour markets begin to distort as a result of globalisation.

These issues indicate that there is no shortage of important research questions. Three in particular merit attention. First, little is known about workplace relations in knowledge-intensive firms that rely on rapid innovation to survive. What are the institutional and organisational factors and processes that promote innovation in these workplaces? Second, globalisation has accelerated organisational restructuring and contributed to growing worker insecurity. There is a need for new mechanisms to ensure that certain fundamental labour standards (including access to continuing education and job search assistance) are not only upheld but raised periodically. This requires more policy-oriented, workplace relations research that is able to integrate micro-strategies with meso- and macro-approaches being developed by governments. Finally, there is the challenge of formulating theory that reflects growing international economic and political interdependence, offering hypotheses that relate globalisation and technological change to simultaneous developments in workplace relations in advanced, recently industrialized, and developing countries.

References

Batstone, E., Boraston, I. & Frenkel, S. 1977, Shop Stewards in Action: The Organization of Workplace Conflict and Accommodation, Blackwell, Oxford.

Batstone, E., Boraston, I. & Frenkel, S. 1978, The Social Organization of Strikes, Blackwell, Oxford.

Burawoy, M. 1983, `Between the labor process and the state: The changing face of factory regimes under advanced capitalism', American Sociological Review, vol. 48, no. 5, pp. 587-605.

Castells, M. 1996, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Vol. 1, The Rise of the Network Society, Blackwell, Oxford.

Fox, A. 1974, Beyond Contract: Work, Power and Trust Relations, Faber & Faber, London.

Frenkel, S. 1986, `Industrial sociology and workplace relations in advanced capitalist societies', International Journal of Comparative Sociology, vol. 27, no. 1-2, pp. 69-85.

Frenkel, S. 1994, `Patterns of workplace relations in the global corporation: Toward convergence?', in Workplace Industrial Relations and the Global Challenge, eds. J. Belanger, P. Edwards & L. Haiven, pp. 240-74, ILR Press, Ithaca.

Frenkel, S. 1995, `Workplace relations in the global corporation: A comparative analysis of subsidiaries in Malaysia and Taiwan', in Industrialization and Labor Relations: Contemporary Research in Seven Countries, eds. S. Frenkel & J. Harrod, pp. 179-215, ILR Press, Ithaca.

Frenkel, S. 1998, `Corporate-subsidiary relations, local contexts and workplace change in global corporations', Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations, vol. 53, no. 1, pp. 51-78.

Frenkel, S. 2001, `Globalization, athletic footwear commodity chains and employment relations in southern China', Organization Studies, vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 531-62.

Frenkel, S. & Coolican, A. 1984, Unions Against Capitalism? A Sociological Comparison of the Australian Building and Metalworkers' Unions, Allen & Unwin, Sydney.

Frenkel, S., Korczynski, M., Shire, K. & Tam, M. 1998, `Beyond bureaucracy: Work organization in call centres', International Journal of Human Resource Management, vol. 9, no. 6, pp. 957-79.

Frenkel, S., Korczynski, M., Shire, K. & Tam, M. 1999, On the Front-line: Organization of Work in the Information Economy, Cornell University Press, Ithaca.

Frenkel, S. & Royal, C. 1997, `Globalization and employment relations', in The Sociology of Work: The Globalization of Work, ed. Randy Hodson, pp. 3-41, JAI Press, Conn.

Frenkel, S. & Royal, C. 1999, `Workers, unions and change in the global corporation: Contemporary experience and future possibilities', in Globalization Patterns and Labour Resistance, ed. J. Waddington, pp. 105-30, Mansell, London.

Frenkel, S. & Kim, S. (unpublished), `Codes of labour practice and labour standards in leading athletic shoe contractor factories in South Korea'.

Frenkel, S. & Scott, D. 2002, `Compliance, collaboration and code of labour practice: The Adidas convection' California Management Review, vol. 45, no. 1.

Giddens, A. 1976, New Rules of Sociological Method: A Positive Critique of Interpretive Sociologies, Hutchinson, London.

Lincoln, J. & Kalleberg, A. 1990, Culture, Control and Commitment, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge US.

Littler, C. 1982, The Development of the Labour Process in Capitalist Societies, Heinemann, London.

Osterman, P. & Kochan, T. 1994, The Mutual Gains Enterprise, Harvard Business School Press, Boston.

Troy, L. 1999, Beyond Unions and Collective Bargaining, M.E. Sharpe, New York.

(Date of receipt of final transcript: May, 2002. Accepted by Sharon Parker and Robert Wood, Special Issue Editors.)

Stephen Frenkel, Australian Graduate School of Management, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052. Email: [e-mail]

Stephen Frenkel is a Professor specialising in the sociology of work and organisation in the Australian Graduate School of Management. Steve's recent research focuses on service and knowledge work and is published as a book titled On the Front Line: Organization of Work in the Information Economy (1999). He also studies the impact of globalisation on human resource practices in developing countries, in particular, the operation of corporate codes of labour practice in global supply chains.