Across Boundaries: The Global Challenges Facing Workers and Employment Research

Abstract

The overall complexity of employment relations today raises new challenges for scholars to extend their work across the boundaries of particular geographies, organizations, theoretical perspectives and disciplines. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the British Journal of Industrial Relations, this article introduces key aspects of global challenges facing employees and research on employment relations. Drawing on the articles of this anniversary issue, we identify several theoretical concepts drawn from the wider social sciences that have proven useful in understanding global challenges around global value chains, transnational and multi-level institutional frameworks, and the role of global finance. We also identify and discuss the emergence of new actors that have a growing salience for global employment research and the establishment of more global forms of worker representation. By further developing theoretical concepts around these global challenges, we argue that employment relations research will increase its dialogue with and distinctive contribution to wider debates in the social sciences.

Mapping the frontier of theory in industrial relations: the contested role of worker representation

“…When markets and companies internationalize, worker representation must also internationalize. For IR theory, a new challenge is to understanding how workers can be represented in transnational value chains that cut across very diverse institutional settings and include actors at different levels with different resources (Jackson et al, 2013). In this section, we review two important mechanisms or institutions of international worker voice that emerged over the past two decades and attracted considerable scholarly attention in the IR field: international framework agreements (IFAs) and European works councils (EWCs).…”

Leveraging the Vertical: The Contested Dynamics of Sustainability Standards and Labour in Global Production Networks

“…First, labour relations are shaped by globally interlinked firms operating in and influenced by national contexts (Jackson et al . ; Lakhani et al . ), with governance relations as a key determinant (Gereffi et al .…”

The Political Economy of Borders in a 'Borderless' European Labour Market

“…This requires examination of the organizational and social relations that underpin the complex relationships in which actors find themselves across national contexts (Jackson et al . ). Bordering is a useful motif to enrich our understanding of political ordering (van Houtum, ) and the literature in relation to EU integration and bordering offers insightful findings for ways in which we can conceive of the current labour market structure in the EU.…”