Forms of labour representation have emerged over recent years that help constrain the global mobility of capital and the strategies of multinational companies (MNCs). This article focuses on one set of developments at company level: forms of voluntary regulation which we refer to as global worker bodies. It analyses the steps taken within three MNCs to establish their global worker bodies: a World Union Council, a Global Union Network and a World Works Council. We apply a regulatory space framework to explore how each MNC set up its global body and followed a distinct pathway that was determined by a unique configuration of factors at different levels. These involved the role of legislation, mandated negotiation, voluntarist negotiation and voluntarism in 'domains' at each level. Our research contributes to the literature on global regulatory space by providing a more nuanced understanding of the role of global worker bodies in this context.

This article presents empirical findings on listed company responses to provisions on board-level workforce engagement in the revised 2018 UK Corporate Governance Code, based on analysis of FTSE 350 company reports, survey data from 70 firms, and a series of 41 interviews with directors, senior managers and workforce representatives across 17 case study firms. The findings suggest that, despite some pockets of good practice, the current code-based regulatory framework is weak and ineffective. In light of this, the article considers current debates around strengthening worker voice in governance structures – including through appeals to corporate purpose, investor engagement, and wider changes in the legal and regulatory architecture. It concludes that any fundamental reform would require a recasting of the narrative around corporate purpose, based on a pluralist recognition of the dual nature of labour/capital investments in the firm and a renewed emphasis on the principle of workplace democracy.

Purpose The article considers the utility of a pluralist perspective in the context of current debates around UK corporate governance reform. Oxford School pluralism advanced both a description of how industrial relations (IR) operated in practice plus a prescription for how it should operate. Whilst economic conditions are different today, a pluralist framing provides not only a useful way of understanding interests in firm governance (description) but also a solid grounding for a pragmatic reform agenda (prescription). Design/methodology/approach Drawing from key texts in the field, the article considers core concepts within pluralist discourse and discusses their relevance to contemporary policy debates. Findings The article provides a short outline of recent economic and political developments and considers how a pluralist framing helps explain firm-level interests, challenging the dominant narrative of shareholder primacy. It then asks what policy interventions might flow from this analysis of capital and labour investments, and how feasible they are in the current UK context. This allows a discussion of levels of analysis (evident in materialist theories such as “radical pluralism” and the “disconnected capitalism thesis”). Finally, it reflects briefly on the links between corporate governance and wider patterns of inequality, suggesting the pluralist position is consistent with a Durkheimian sociology focusing on the potential in state-led regulatory interventions to tackle anomie and strengthen social solidarity. Originality/value The article brings together literature from what are often treated as relatively discrete areas of enquiry (employment relations and corporate governance) and also considers the public policy implications of these connections.

Thoroughly revised and updated to include contemporary terms that have gained importance such as furlough, unconscious bias, platform work, and Great Resignation, this second edition of the Encyclopedia of Human Resource Management is an authoritative and comprehensive reference resource comprising almost 400 entries on core HR areas and concepts.

This article evaluates the provisions for information disclosure to employees contained in the UK Takeover Code, following the implementation of the Directive on Takeover Bids (2004/25/EC) in 2006 and further amendments resulting from the Kraft/Cadbury takeover in 2010, among other developments. It contrasts information and consultation (I&C) provisions across other EU directives on employment relations and emphasizes that the Takeover Bids Directive restricts itself to information disclosure, allowing employees merely to append their opinion to the offeree board circular. Detailed analysis reveals that very few opinions have actually been given over the past 12 years (2006–2017 inclusive), and of these almost one-third complain about lack of information. These empirical findings highlight the weakness of the UK provisions, and the article concludes by proposing areas where further regulatory reform might strengthen I&C in the takeover process.

In recent decades, trade unions have employed a range of revitalisation strategies aimed at regaining lost power. A relatively neglected area within the literature on revitalisation concerns union engagement with corporate social responsibility. Locating trade unions within a classification of civil society organisations from the political science literature, this article presents a typology of the multiple ways in which trade unions can engage with corporate social responsibility. Data from a pan-European study across 11 countries are used to illustrate the various ways in which unions are attempting to move out of their traditional ‘comfort zone’ with respect to corporate social responsibility, each of which presents them with both new opportunities and challenges. We show how trade unions are working on different ‘pressure points’ and act as purposeful agents within certain organisational parameters and particular national frameworks. In sum, the article considers the potential that corporate social responsibility provides for trade unions, and reflects on the likely direction of revitalisation debates.

This article draws upon the disconnected capitalism thesis (DCT) to analyse UK takeovers and their implications for workers. The DCT refers to the disconnect between the source of value creation (the labour process) and the wider political economy. Specifically, we highlight a particular aspect of this disconnect whereby those who create value and have a long-term stake in firms (employees and managers at the firm level) are disconnected from decisions regarding takeovers, as a consequence of wider economic and political trends (processes of financialisation/marketisation and associated state support for a neoliberal takeover regime). We outline these trends and argue the case for are-connect, which will require empowering employees and managers to have more influence in takeover decisions and, in turn,disempowering shareholders and financial intermediaries. The article thus highlights the regulatory space for takeovers and considers feasible policy options, a set of interlinked regulatory changes, which will in particular require a more assertive state.

Small businesses in developing countries, as part of global supply chains, are sometimes assumed to respond in a straightforward manner to institutional demands for improved working conditions. This article problematizes this perspective. Drawing upon extensive qualitative data from Tirupur's knitwear export industry in India, we highlight owner-managers' agency in avoiding or circumventing these demands. The small businesses here actively engage in irresponsible business practices and evasion institutional work to disrupt institutional demands in three ways: undermining assumptions and values, dissociating consequences, and accumulating autonomy and political strength. This evasion work is supported by three conditions: void (in labor welfare mechanisms), distance (from institutional monitors), and contradictions (between value systems). Through detailed empirical findings, the article contributes to research on both small business social responsibility and institutional work.

This article argues that critical realism (CR) offers an ontological position suited to understanding the dynamic relations between multinational companies (MNCs) and the complex political spaces within which they operate. After outlining the core assumptions of CR, the key arguments are elaborated through two case studies which focus on issues of staffing and expatriation. The first case concerns recent developments in the Middle East, highlighting the shifting reality of nationality-based definitions of staffing the MNC, and the second examines the internationalisation of Chinese firms, exploring the way MNCs restructure space to retain access to home-country advantages.

The effectiveness of corporate social responsibility (CSR) depends not only on the willingness of corporate management to engage in social and environmental initiatives but also on the capacity of an active civil society to monitor these commitments. Studies of the interaction between business and civil society organizations (CSOs) in developing CSR have focused primarily on non-governmental organizations (NGOs). By comparison, the role of other CSOs in CSR is less well understood, particularly that of labor unions. Building on the political science literature on classifying CSOs, this article presents a typology of the multiple ways in which labor unions can engage with CSR. The usefulness of the typology is illustrated with data generated from a pan-European study across 11 countries. The article highlights the complexity of labor union engagement with CSR, confirming that union strategies cannot simply be ‘read off’ from ideal-typical union positions within particular national business systems.

The rise of modern corporations has been accompanied by an expansion of salaried executives who have replaced owner-managers. With this expansion, the new class of managers/executives came to regard themselves as stewards of large and complex corporations, and not principally or exclusively as agents for the owners. Emerging as a self- styled ‘profession’, there was a continuous debate around the necessity for the corporation to be responsible to the collective and to its stakeholders. During long parts of the twentieth century the professed intent was to balance and synthesize a plurality of interests in order to ensure the long term survival and success of the corporation, pursue national strategic interests, create employment, support networks of suppliers, develop new technology as well as create an adequate or satisfactory return for shareholders. The rise of agency theory in the late 1970s and early 1980s challenged this understanding of management. Arguing that markets rather than managers provide an efficient allocation of scarce resources, it pushed an agenda in which the corporation had to pursue one single goal – the maximization of shareholder value (MSV) and that managers should be incentivised to respond to (financial) market forces. This idea has today become a highly influential doctrine which infuses senior executive thinking, investors thinking, corporate governance theory and public policy and regulatory decision making. Backed by this belief, many managers now act on the basis of a folk wisdom that shareholders are the only important constituency, which leads them to deliver short-term strategic decisions, high executive remuneration, and offshoring strategies with regard to manufacturing and finance. This comes at the detriment of broader and longer-term perspectives on the purpose of the firm in modern societies and has created worse management and less competitive companies. It is ironic that the obsession with MSV has actually destroyed long-term shareholder value and that it has significantly decreased the average life span of corporations during the past 30 years. We provide this Summary of certain fundamentals of management in an effort to help prevent analytical errors which can have severe and damaging effects on corporations.

Drawing upon interview data from three case study organizations, we examine the role of middle managers in UK public service reform. Using theory fragments from organizational ecology and role theory, we develop three role archetypes that middle managers might be enacting. We find that rather than wholesale enactment of a change agent' role, middle managers are balancing three predominant, but often conflicting, change-related roles: as government agent', diplomat administrator' and, less convincingly, entrepreneurial leader'. Central government targets are becoming the main preoccupation for middle managers across many public services and they represent a dominant constraint on allowing managers to manage'.

The effectiveness of corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a self-regulation mechanism depends on an active civil society. Hence the dynamic interaction between business and civil society organizations (CSOs) has been studied with a particular emphasis on campaigning non-governmental organizations (NGOs); yet the role in CSR of other CSOs is less well understood, in particular that of labor unions. Building on typologies for classifying CSOs from the political science literature, the paper develops propositions on labor union engagement with CSR and explores these through data from a qualitative pan-European study across eleven countries. The paper advances an extended notion of an insider group, namely one that is recognized and engaged in consultation by several societal actors, not just government. Multiple recognition and involvement in consultation can, in turn, lead to additional conflict when the multiple avenues for recognition and consultation are not aligned. The paper also heeds calls in the recent literature to pay greater attention to the role of conflict in business-CSO relations.