Employment relations and the state in Southeast Asia

Abstract

This article engages critically with the comparative employment relations literature, assessing its capacity to explain and analyse the relationship between state objectives -accumulation, pacification, legitimation -and employment relations. Having engaged with approaches that have influenced the discipline in recent decades, it draws on insights from capitalist Southeast Asia to identify determining factors not accounted for in comparative employment relations models developed from and applied to the Global North. These include the relatively high degree of fluidity in forms of governance characteristic of contexts where there is a dynamic interplay between democratic and authoritarian rule, which challenges the assumption that employment relations are underpinned by a relatively strong, stable and autonomous state. Equally significant is the impact of interstate and international interests and influences, only some of which are economic, on the balance between different state objectives as they pertain to employment relations.

A critical discourse analysis of the link between professional culture and organisational culture

“…This is because professionals occupy crucial and powerful roles in society by using their uncommon specialised knowledge for the overall benefit of society (Brien, 1998). Our approach is consistent with prior studies (Bailey et al, 2009;Koca-Helvaci, 2015;Ford and Gillan, 2016) that have also used CDA to explore organisational behaviours, albeit in the context of employment relations and human resource management (HRM) (Vaara and Tienari, 2008).…”

Employment relations and political transition in Cambodia

“…This article is structured as follows. First, drawing on Hyman's typology of state functions as they pertain to industrial relations (see Ford and Gillan, 2016), we discuss the transition of Cambodia from a centralised state to a democratic market economy, highlighting the context of international intervention in peacebuilding and the implications for employment relations reform. The second section outlines the industrial relations mechanisms established through that reform and their significance for workers and employers.…”

Book Review: Varieties of Transformation in Industrial Relations: An International Perspective

“…Further criticism of the VoC framework relates to its having little applicability to developing economies that have a large informal economy and labor market that relies more on traditional uncodified norms, conventions, and behavior (Witt and Redding 2014: 28). This argument is particularly relevant to the gap that exists between the formal composition of institutions and the actual practice of industrial relations in much of Asia (Ford and Gillan 2016: 172).…”