ABSTRACT This article provides a comprehensive review of existing research and develops an agenda for analyzing legitimacy in employment relations. It argues that legitimacy should be understood as a dynamic and contested process through which actors, institutions and policy ideas are legitimated, delegitimated and reworked. The article examines the legitimacy of employment relations ideas, the relationship between legitimacy, power and politics, the legitimacy of employment relations actors and of employment relations as a field of study. It concludes by locating the articles in this special issue within this broad agenda and draws out key insights for legitimacy research in employment relations.

This article uses theories of legitimacy to explain, first, why centre-right governments in Australia, Ireland and the United Kingdom collaborated with trade unions to develop worker-protective policy mechanisms during the COVID crisis and, second, variation in the post-COVID influence of unions over the policy agendas of these governments. Drawing on an analysis of 35 elite interviews, it argues that unions in all three countries were able to achieve policy influence during COVID because their legitimacy increased in a crisis context. However, the extent to which union influence over neoliberal governments was sustained post-COVID varied, with weak influence in the United Kingdom, moderate influence in Australia and stronger influence in Ireland. The findings highlight the importance of residual forms of legitimacy derived from previous episodes in explaining this variation and the circumstances in which actor legitimacy changes over time, thus adding a temporal dimension to industrial relations theories of legitimacy.

This article analyses the role of immigration policy as a distinct source of skills supply in liberal market economies. It draws upon interviews with representatives of employer associations and trade unions in the Australian construction and hospitality industries to identify how labour market actors make sense of the function of immigration policy. Rather than 'complementing' or 'undermining' training and other domestic labour market institutions, as is often assumed, immigration policy can serve to remedy the systemic failures of these institutions to supply skills in the short term. However, overreliance on immigration can disincentivise reform of the labour market institutions necessary to generate adequate skills supply in the long term. The findings suggest the need to reconceptualise the function of immigration policy in terms of its distinct rather than equivalent functions to labour market institutions.

This introductory chapter surveys institutional experimentation that has emerged internationally in response to the contraction of the traditional model of employment protection. Various initiatives are discussed according to the particular challenges they are designed to address: the emergence of non-standard employment contracts; increasing sources of labour supply engaging in non-standard work; intensification of exogenous pressures on the employment relationship; the growth of intermediaries that separate the management from the control of labour; and the emergence of entities that subvert the employment relationship entirely. Whereas post-war industrial relations scholars characterised the traditional regulatory model as a ‘web of rules’, we argue that nascent institutional experimentation is indicative of an emergent ‘patchwork of rules’. The identification of such experimentation is instructive for scholars, policymakers, workers’ representatives and employers seeking solutions to the contraction of the traditional regulatory model.

This chapter examines regulatory experimentation in relation to gender equality and the gender pay and representation gaps. The corporate sector has long promoted a voluntarist ‘business case’ for equality as part of their wider agenda to promote CSR, an approach that fits within the second web of rules. However, slow progress prompted governments to introduce proactive legislative measures such as gender pay gap reporting and gender quotas. At the same time, the traditional web of joint regulation continues to be relevant with trade unions using equal pay litigation to challenge the historical undervaluation of work by low-paid women and negotiate new collective pay structures to deliver tangible benefits to low-paid women. Union litigation in the UK local authority sector and the New Zealand care sector are compared. The chapter argues that the three webs are more usefully understood as complements rather than substitutes.

This chapter assesses the response by trade unions in New Zealand, Australia and Ireland to labour market deregulation since the 1980s. While these three countries have been on the front line of neoliberalism, and the traditional web of rules in each country has been weakened, change has occured unevenly, in part due to different union strategies. The chapter examines the ways in which unions employed institutional experimentations to defend the collectivist web of rules and strengthen labour standards. It argues that an augmented model of pluralism has emerged in all three countries in the form of stronger individual rights but that this is no substitute for collective bargaining mechanisms.

In this concluding chapter, we draw together the various contributions presented in this volume, discuss the broader implications of our findings, and reflect on how this builds upon Willy Brown's work. The chapter examines how the patchwork of rules has been altered by new and emerging challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of global supply chains and new forms of business. We return to the central objective of this volume of identifying and analysing the viability of various institutions for addressing these challenges and discuss how these might form the basis of a new web of rules for protecting labour standards in the future.

This article analyzes how engagement in legitimation politics in Australia and New Zealand has enabled unions to influence the industrial relations policy process. It demonstrates how enhanced moral legitimacy with the wider public positively impacts unions’ pragmatic legitimacy with governing political parties. Drawing on Grant’s insider–outsider typology, we show how enhanced legitimacy can increase unions’ power resources as insider groups with center‐left and, to a lesser extent, center‐right governing parties, which can enable greater influence over industrial relations policy.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review "institutional experimentation" for protecting workers in response to the contraction of the standard employment relationship and the corresponding rise of "non-standard" forms of paid work. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on the existing research and knowledge base of the authors as well as a thorough review of the extant literature relating to: non-standard employment contracts; sources of labour supply engaging in non-standard work; exogenous pressures on the employment relationship; intermediaries that separate the management from the control of labour; and entities that subvert the employment relationship. Findings Post-war industrial relations scholars characterised the traditional regulatory model of collective bargaining and the standard employment contract as a "web of rules". As work relations have become more market mediated, new institutional arrangements have developed to govern these relations and regulate the terms of engagement. The paper argues that these are indicative of an emergent "patchwork of rules" which are instructive for scholars, policymakers, workers' representatives and employers seeking solutions to the contraction of the traditional regulatory model. Originality/value The paper addresses calls to examine the "institutional intersections" that have informed the changing ways that work is conducted and regulated. These intersections transcend international, national, sectoral and local units of analysis, as well as supply chains, fissured organisational dynamics, intermediaries and online platforms. The analysis also encompasses the broad range of stakeholders including businesses, labour and community groups, nongovernmental organisations and online communities that have influenced changing institutional approaches to employment protection.

© 2018, The Author(s) 2018. A questioning of the neoliberal consensus in the global economic order is creating turbulence in Western democracies. Long regarded as the only viable capitalist model, neoliberalism is now subjected to increasing scrutiny. Management education that has been aligned to a neoliberal worldview must now respond to this shifting landscape in order to retain its legitimacy. One core element of management education undergoing revision as a result is the case method of teaching. The case method’s traditionally narrow focus on training students to solve business problems is increasingly problematic in an environment where the structure of the capitalist system in which firms operate is now a topic of debate. To address this, we argue for a reconceptualization of the case method’s relationship with theory. This has conventionally taken two forms: a hostility to any inclusion of theory in the analytical process and an approach that uses theory as an instrument for profit maximization. We propose an alternative third approach that encourages students to engage in a critical questioning of business-as-usual capitalism from the perspective of multiple stakeholders, including managers, employees, unions, not-for-profit organizations, government, and the natural environment.

Academy of Management Learning & EducationVol. 17, No. 1 Book & Resource ReviewsThe Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, The Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite, by Duff McDonald. New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 2017. 672 pages, hard coverTodd Bridgman, Stephen Cummings and Colm McLaughlinTodd BridgmanVictoria University of Wellington, New Zealand ();, Stephen CummingsVictoria University of Wellington, New Zealand (); and Colm McLaughlinUniversity College Dublin, Ireland ()Published Online:8 Mar 2018https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2017.0439AboutSectionsView articleView Full TextPDF/EPUB ToolsDownload CitationsAdd to favoritesTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail View article"The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, The Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite, by Duff McDonald. New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 2017. 672 pages, hard cover." Academy of Management Learning & Education, 17(1), pp. 110–111REFERENCESAnteby M. 2013. Manufacturing morals: The values of silence and business school education. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Google ScholarBridgman T., Cummings S., & McLaughlin C. 2016. Re-stating the case: How revisiting the development of the case method can help us think differently about the future of the business school. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 15(4): 724–741.Link , Google ScholarBridgman T., McLaughlin C., & Cummings S. In press. Overcoming the problem with solving business problems: Using theory differently to rejuvenate the case method for turbulent times. Journal of Management Education, doi/10.1177/1052562917754236. Google ScholarDelves Broughton P. 2008. Ahead of the curve: Two years at Harvard Business School. New York: Penguin Press. Google ScholarKhurana R. 2007. From higher aims to hired hands. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Google ScholarFiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsCited byDeveloping and Harnessing Historical Sensibility to Overcome the Influence of Dominant Logics: A Pedagogical ModelAndrew Cavanagh, Glen Croy, Julie Wolfram Cox and Abe de Jong4 January 2023 | Academy of Management Learning & Education, Vol. 0, No. ja Vol. 17, No. 1 Permissions Metrics in the past 12 months History Published online 8 March 2018 Published in print 1 March 2018 Information© Academy of Management Learning & EducationDownload PDF

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to review “institutional experimentation” for protecting workers in response to the contraction of the standard employment relationship and the corresponding rise of “non-standard” forms of paid work.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on the existing research and knowledge base of the authors as well as a thorough review of the extant literature relating to: non-standard employment contracts; sources of labour supply engaging in non-standard work; exogenous pressures on the employment relationship; intermediaries that separate the management from the control of labour; and entities that subvert the employment relationship.FindingsPost-war industrial relations scholars characterised the traditional regulatory model of collective bargaining and the standard employment contract as a “web of rules”. As work relations have become more market mediated, new institutional arrangements have developed to govern these relations and regulate the terms of engagement. The paper argues that these are indicative of an emergent “patchwork of rules” which are instructive for scholars, policymakers, workers’ representatives and employers seeking solutions to the contraction of the traditional regulatory model.Research limitations/implicationsWhile the review of the institutional experimentation is potentially instructive for developing solutions to gaps in labour regulation, a drawback of this approach is that there are limits to the realisation of policy transfer. Some of the initiatives discussed in the paper may be more effective than others for protecting workers on non-standard contracts, but further research is necessary to test their effectiveness including in different contexts.Social implicationsThe findings indicate that a task ahead for the representatives of government, labour and business is to determine how to adapt the emergent patchwork of rules to protect workers from the new vulnerabilities created by, for example, employer extraction and exploitation of their individual bio data, social media data and, not far off, their personal genome sequence.Originality/valueThe paper addresses calls to examine the “institutional intersections” that have informed the changing ways that work is conducted and regulated. These intersections transcend international, national, sectoral and local units of analysis, as well as supply chains, fissured organisational dynamics, intermediaries and online platforms. The analysis also encompasses the broad range of stakeholders including businesses, labour and community groups, nongovernmental organisations and online communities that have influenced changing institutional approaches to employment protection.

This paper analyzes the uneven processes underpinning industrial relations policy liberalization in New Zealand, Australia, the UK, and Ireland. Drawing upon 140 elite interviews and building upon ideational comparative political theories, the paper highlights the role of ideas in the policy change process. It identifies how particular ideas can be used to construct policy problems, how these ideas can gain legitimacy through battles with competing ideas, and how policy legacies can influence whether ideas take root. The findings from the comparative case analysis expose a critical difference between positive legacies and negative legacies to account for different liberalization trajectories.

This article draws on an industrial dispute over the filming of The Hobbit in New Zealand in 2010 to contribute to the theorisation of the interplay between interests and identities and our understanding of mobilisation and collective identity. While industrial disputes are typically viewed as conflict between groups with opposing material interests, this may miss the way in which both the identities of those involved and their interests are discursively constituted in articulatory processes. Specifically, we apply Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory and in doing so demonstrate that the dispute was more than a conflict over working conditions, it was a hegemonic struggle to fix meaning. In making this conceptual contribution we highlight a tendency within industrial relations analysis to reify interests.