Commodity chains that are global in extent have increasingly come to be seen as the defining element of the contemporary globalized world economy. Since the 1990s a body of theory — evolving from global commodity chain analysis to global value chain analysis to global production network analysis — has focused upon understanding how such commodity chains function. However, despite providing many important insights, these bodies of literature have generally suffered from a major deficiency in that they have failed to consider labour as an active agent capable of shaping such chains' structure and geographical organization. Here, then, we present a case for locating more centrally labour, in production network analysis.

Theorists of work and employment (W&E) practices should more seriously engage with literatures concerning how space is constitutive of social praxis. Rather than simply serving as a stage upon which social life is played out or being merely a reflection of social relations, the construction of the economic landscape in particular ways is fundamental to how social systems function. Struggles over space are a central dynamic in W&E practices as different actors engage with the economic landscape to ensure their 'geographical vision' is emplaced in that landscape. Furthermore, conflicts over W&E practices frequently revolve around the spatial (re)scaling of such practices (as when collective bargaining is 'decentralized'). Consequently, an important key to better theorizing W&E practices is understanding how the various spatial scales at which these operate are socially constructed and discursively represented.

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Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to introduce a conceptual model that integrates multi-disciplinary research in relation to crisis management, and to consider its application for international human resource managers in preventing and managing the evacuation of expatriate staff during crises. Design/methodology/approach -The paper critically reviews and distils research into crisis and evacuation management, and examines its relevance to a generic framework of international human resource roles. The paper evaluates this body of literature and suggests potential research avenues from an international human resource perspective. Findings -The review reveals a dearth of research on emergency evacuation of expatriates from a human resources perspective. The paper articulates a framework that delineates what role human resource managers could, or should, play during crisis preparation and response. This framework aims to establish a basic "roadmap" for use by practitioners and researchers. Originality/value -Focusing on the human (rather than business) implications of crises, the paper links crisis management literature to the role of international human resource managers in supporting the health, safety, and security of international assignees during crises. A framework is presented which enables managers to map their current (and potential) contributions to preventing and managing expatriate evacuation. From this, several avenues of future research are drawn.

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In this article, we argue for a deeper and more theoretically informed engagement between the fields of industrial relations and geography. We lay out a number of concepts developed more fully by geographers and show, through four vignettes, how such concepts can add to our understanding of industrial relations practices.[W]hat gives a place its specificity is not some long internalized history but the fact that it is constructed out of a particular constellation of social relations, meeting and weaving together at a particular locus. Instead . . . of thinking of places as areas with boundaries around, they can be imagined as articulated moments in networks of social relations and understandings, but where a large proportion of those relations, experiences and understandings are constructed on a far larger scale than what we happen to define for that moment as the place itself, whether that be a street, or a region or even a continent. And this, in turn, allows a sense of place which is extroverted, which includes a consciousness of its links with a wider world, which integrates in a positive way the global and the local [Massey, 1993: 155].Hopefully we should soon see an increase in IR citations of economic geographers [Kelly, 2004: 191].

Governments in the western world are increasingly experimenting with education policies that devolve responsibility for hiring and staffing to the local school level. Driven by forces of neoliberalism, marketisation and decentralisation, such reforms differentially affect schools as a result of various geographic and socio‐spatial factors. This article presents the findings of a recent study of public schools in the Australian state of New South Wales, and the impact that the government's Local schools, local decisions policy has had on staffing and hiring decisions within schools considered ‘hard‐to‐staff’. Drawing on interviews conducted with school principals and representatives of industrial bodies, this article reveals the differential and geographically diverse impact of devolutionary reform on ‘hard‐to‐staff’ schools. It posits that while the reforms facilitate the augmentation of staffing composition and enhanced decision‐making flexibility, the interaction of the policy with existing staffing processes undermines the reform's potential.