This article proposes a new theoretical framework of employer association (EA) adaptive innovation, a strategic organizational response to challenging environments facing EAs and/or relevant firms. Through adaptive innovation, EAs can enlarge their span of service offerings beyond collective, selective and elective goods, services typically explained by Olson-inspired, market-transactional theorizing. We identify, explain and conceptualize EA shifts into also offering common goods as community-building, relational types of collective action. Territorial ecosystems are one prominent new domain for this type of strategic adaptive intervention. In our illustrative case, this involves collectively organizing an open innovation ecosystem beyond an EA's own walls. Ostrom's theorizing on the governance of the commons better explains these initiatives than Olson's. Our new framework, therefore, integrates Ostrom's with Olson's theories. In broadening the field's understanding of EA strategic opportunities, this article also opens prominent lines of inquiry for future EA research.

Samsung has largely shifted its electronics manufacturing out of China, and mostly to Vietnam. In that process, it has, to date, avoided local labour market (LLM) difficulties faced by its subsidiaries in industrial parks in China: in particular, pervasive skill shortages among the electronics assembly workers on whom Samsung’s manufacturing depends. Labour retention problems in China had significantly challenged its commitment to invest in necessary employee training. By contrast, Samsung’s domination of foreign direct investment (FDI) within particular Vietnamese industrial parks has removed the inter-employer competition it experienced in China. A deeper explanation involves Samsung’s development – as Vietnam’s largest single source of FDI, and major producer of that country’s exports – of synergistic and symbiotic relationships with Vietnam’s national and subnational governments. These relationships have allowed Samsung to influence development strategies for industrial parks and their LLMs. Samsung has invests expansively in forms of education and training whose benefits extend beyond the areas in which its manufacturing facilities operate, to populations that the company does not employ. Providing benefits beyond typical success criteria for FDI in developing economies, Samsung has helped Vietnam’s party-state meet its own legitimacy needs with its internal constituencies, contributing to a broader practical consensus in favour of the party-state’s development policies. This article therefore widens the perspective of FDI to embed it in national and subnational business–government relations.

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.

The emphasis of employers and employer associations, when 2020 began, was largely business as usual. With the pandemic's advent, employers and associations reoriented some industrial relations activity, which encouraged cooperation while also highlighting sharp divisions. As the year progressed, however, it became increasingly apparent that the federal government's responses to the pandemic provided unanticipated opportunities for the employer movement to push intensively their long-expressed desires for changes to the institutional structures of industrial relations, and hence also bargaining and other processes. This article examines these and other activities which preoccupied employers and their associations in 2020 while also analysing some broader environmental, social and governance challenges affecting employer groups, which impact on their purpose and place within the employer movement more generally.

Michael Quinlan's enormously productive academic career has developed over three stages. In each, he has pioneered new fields whether as sole author/teacher or as part of small, closely-knit and mostly multidisciplinary teams. We explain how Michael's time at the University of Sydney (from 1971), as undergraduate, doctoral student and tutor in industrial relations (IR), encouraged his focus on big, challenging phenomena that affect workers in profound ways. His doctoral thesis examined migrant experiences of work and IR in Australia, but he has always been interested in IR history and policy. Nonetheless, he soon transferred his attention to occupational health and safety (OHS), his main and enduring passion as researcher, teacher and policy analyst. At Griffith University (from 1981), he greatly developed this involvement with OHS. With the times propitious, and as a leader in research and education, he went beyond uncovering the IR of workplace hazard causation to highlight systems for preventively managing and regulating OHS. In this, Michael has played a nationally and internationally crucial role in bringing OHS and IR together. This impact has grown substantially since Michael joined the University of New South Wales, Sydney in 1994. The chapter concludes with summaries of this book's other chapters.

The May federal election appeared particularly important to employers' views of their industrial relations' interests. Employers and their associations had long steeled themselves against an unwelcome Labor victory, fearing Labor's promises of substantial changes to industrial relations' structures, processes and outcomes as well as taxation. Associations appeared busier than ever, representing employers through politics-related public relations, lobbying and media. With enterprise bargaining withering and most wages stagnant, Labor's defeat encouraged associations and the re-elected government to engage in another, for-now stalled, attack on what remains of unions' capacity to collectively protect employees. They have also focused on emergent (individual) employment law challenges for employers but have mainly deflected on widespread evidence of wage underpayment. While the political context again strongly favours employers and their associations, they face substantial challenges from rising media and public criticisms over employers' widespread abuses of their social licence to operate.

For employers and employer associations, 2018 was in part a year of submissions to government inquiries, the 4-yearly modern wage review and the minimum wage review. Issues of numerical flexibility, including casual work, the gig economy and labour hire, also consumed much attention. It was also a year in which public discontent with the business world, particularly with big business, in relation to industrial relations and broader socio-political issues, and the questioning of its social licence to operate have escalated. In examining the major issues that concerned employers and their associations during the year, this article also discusses the pressures building for them in expressing and promoting their industrial relations agendas in response to a looming federal election, dynamic trade union campaigning and growing public discontent with the industrial relations system in its current form.

This chapter explains how and why chaebols founded Korea’s first national employer association, the Korea Employers Federation (KEF) in 1970, despite facing little threat from unions or pro-employee government intervention. It then explores the KEF’s changing roles in responding to chaebols’ expectations up to 2010. As chaebols grew and moved into new industries, their main industrial relations interests were maintaining low labour costs and unimpeded workplace control. In this, they had government support until Korea’s democratization in 1987. Needing little collective leadership, they instead sought increasing technical expertise from KEF staff. With democratization, chaebols received much less government support. Industrial relations now included independent unionism and militancy, rising wages, and legislative support for collective bargaining and individual employee rights. Chaebols now wanted KEF representation, which became significant for lobbying governments, negotiating with peak unions and within the Tripartite Commission. Nonetheless, its lack of authority over chaebols limited its strategies.

While research on corporate political activity (CPA) recognizes different national institutions as important sources of heterogeneous CPA across countries, less attention has been given to the influence of diverse, within-country institutions, especially informal institutions at the local level. We develop a framework wherein firms’ CPA is shaped by the imprints of past dominant informal institution in a city where the firms domicile, and apply it to Chinese private firms undertaking formal CPA. The strength of the imprint of Maoist ideology varies significantly across Chinese cities, primarily resulting from different cities’ degree of centrality in the state planning system. In cities where such imprint is stronger, firms are less likely to undertake CPA, and if they do, they do it to a less degree. This negative relationship is stronger for smaller firms than for larger firms. Such ideological imprint also interacts with present, formal institutions in influencing CPA. Our framework is supported through a multilevel analysis of 1,427 Chinese private firms in 21 cities. Our study contributes to the CPA literature by bringing history to the fore and unpacking the mechanisms through which a specific historical condition is maintained within a geographic location and persists in shaping contemporary organizational behaviors.

Recent research shows employer associations strategically responding to external challenges, from collective bargaining decentralisation, by altering their offerings of "selective" goods (to directly address threats to membership levels) and of "elective" goods (to revenues). Implicit is that traditional "collective goods" are irrelevant for achieving sustainability. That literature also suggests that territorial associations are more vulnerable than sectoral ones. In this qualitative, longitudinal comparative case study, we explore why and how two territorial associations, the largest each in Italy and Australia, have pursued sustainability by also innovatively enlarging their collective goods activities. This has involved shifting from bargaining leadership to promoting economic dynamism within their territories. Using metaorganisation theory and the resource-based view, we explain how these associations realised their strategic advantages. Our evidence suggests that innovatively developing new collective goods may be another important way associations can improve their competitive positions.

This paper contributes to organizational development research by exploring how strategic and organizational change takes shape within meta-organizations (MOs), i.e. organizations that have other organizations rather than individuals as members. By combining insights from meta-organizations and upper echelon theories, we propose a theoretical framework for understanding the change process in non-traditional organizational settings. Longitudinal case studies methodology is adopted to analyze the choices, reasoning and action of Italy’s major territorial employer association. Results suggests that strategic and organizational transformation processes in such contexts is characterized by factors common to traditional organizations and factors specific to employer associations (as meta-organizations). Among the latter, we find that a key driver for change was the mutual interdependence of (a) an increasing membership heterogeneity, (b) the external environment, specifically the industry context (in our case EAs environment) and the geo-economic territory, and (c) the emergence of a new, strong leadership coalition able to overcome the existing ‘dominant logic’ that determines that important strategic choices get made, and that they get implemented in consistent and coherent ways.

Through critical literature review, we introduce the special issue's focus, HRM in China: Differences within the country'. Researchers have, in practice, neglected to sufficiently contextualize HRM in China in order to identify, address and explain these differences. This has occurred despite continual calls for better contextualization, a theme common across other, overlapping fields: management in China; organizational behaviour; and HRM in general. A major impediment has been an unwillingness to contextualize beyond the organization or, perhaps the industry. This reflects dominant theoretical preferences in North America that produce literature-led research agendas and outside-in' research on China. In effect, academic pressures and the resulting literature also shape research approaches to contextualizing HRM in China. In seeking to promote phenomena-led research with inside-out' orientations, we highlight two important contextual conceptions of differences': diversity within China, especially where related to space and place; and rising evidence of expressed differences of interests within China's labour markets. The rest of the article provides summary overviews of this special issue's other seven articles, focusing on the phenomena they examine, the contexts they work with, the disciplines they embrace and the research designs/methods they employ. We conclude with suggestions for further research.

The literature has neglected to analyse employer associations as organizations facing potential environmental threats to their financial sustainability. We examine associations' responses to collective bargaining decentralization, a major, contemporary threat. Using a qualitative, comparative case approach, we examine eight associations four each in Australia and Italy to develop a model of response types. Stronger decentralization effects increase associations' exposure to new and heightened competition, which in turn produces stronger association responses. These include prioritizing commercial over associational objectives. We analyse responses using strategic choice and resource dependence theories, finding that associations use both. However, the decision how to combine them reflects environmental conditions as well as choices linking organizational purpose and financial sustainability.

We locate the 1980 formation of the Singapore National Employers' Federation (SNEF) within a history of Singaporean tripartism. This redresses a general neglect of employer associations in that system and suggests re-conceptualising Singaporean tripartism into three overlapping phases between 1960 and 1985. The motivations for the first two are well understood. Once in government, the People's Action Party (PAP) suppressed political and union opposition and then sought legitimacy and the integration of Singapore's working class, including by providing a central role for a subordinated union movement. We argue that in a third phase, emerging during the 1970s, PAP brought employer associations into its national distributed leadership model that meshed close personal ties and institutional tripartite roles. SNEF's formation was necessary for rapid tripartite implementation of the PAP's radical shift in economic strategy.