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The Supreme Court dropped several of its most anxiously awaited and controversial cases during the last week of June 2023. While two of the cases, 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis and Students for Fair Admissions., Inc., v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, received most of the press, a third case will likely be the most consequential of the three for the hospitality industry. In Groff v. DeJoy, Postmaster General, the Supreme Court, in a 9-0 decision, rejected a 25 year+ interpretation of a Supreme Court case defining employers' obligations to accommodate religion. Because the Court released its Groff decision during the same week as the release of both 303 Creative and the Harvard cases, Groff was lost in the shuffle. However, we argue that Groff 's imprecise but radical change of what constitutes an undue hardship for religious accommodations under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 will create confusion, may cause dissention, and will add to an already difficult labor market in hospitality and other industries. To support our proposition, this article examines (a) the development of religious accommodation law before 1977, (b) the 1977 Supreme Court case that the Groff Court rejected, (c) the subsequent precedent of that 1977 case, (d) the passing and development of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and then, (e) the effect of Groff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the relationship between ownership form and human resource (HR) practices in a franchise system. Using data from a unique establishment-level survey of a US-based limited service hotel chain, the author examines how HR practices vary between franchisee- and company-owned hotels, and among franchisees with diverse ownership structures. Consistent with agency theory predictions of franchisee profit motives and free-riding behavior, franchisee-owned hotels are associated with lower investments in HR practices compared to company-owned hotels. The results of this study suggest that ownership structures influence HR investments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on organizational theory, agency theory, and research in strategic human resource management, this study explores how chain affiliation influences human resource (HR) investments using data from a nationally random survey of restaurant establishments. We propose that chain-affiliated units will make different investments in those areas of the HR system where chains establish superior organizational routines compared with nonaffiliated units. By contrast, we argue that in the absence of chain routines, ownership incentives will drive differences in human resource investments. Specifically, we find that franchisee-owned units focus more on cost reduction by underinvesting in human resource practices compared with company-owned units and independently owned units when organizational routines are not provided by the chain. We provide further support for our theoretical arguments using additional data on multiunit ownership and franchisor influence. Finally, we conduct supplemental analyses to explore the relationship between different human resource investments and two important organizational outcomes: employee turnover and customer satisfaction ratings from Yelp. Our results highlight the types of human resource practices that are important for service work and suggest that the provision of organizational routines can have important implications for the long-run success of chains and their units. Funding: Financial support from the Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies, Cornell University; and the Rockefeller Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.1539. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We posit that traditional employment relations theories that focus on individual firms embedded in distinct national institutional contexts are no longer adequate for the analysis of employment relations in a globalized era where production and services are increasingly coordinated across countries and firms. Building on global value chain theory, we introduce a configurational framework that explicitly addresses the employment relations implications of the interconnections within and between firms in the global economy. We argue that different value chain configurations will evidence different employment relations patterns, and we validate our framework by applying it to the study of three contemporary global issues. In sum, the framework permits a shift in the focus of employment relations scholarship away from the individual firm to the global networks in which they belong, and hence provides a new theoretical lens for the analysis of employment relations in the global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The precipitous decline in union density and influence around the world has spawned a growing body of scholarship on union renewal. While this literature evidences lively debates regarding the efficacy of different renewal strategies, many argue that the path to renewal is paved through increased member activism. In this article, we question that premise. We examine the importance of rank-and-file union member activism in 44 cases of organizing campaigns in the United States and in the UK. Our review of these cases reveals little support for the notion that member activism is indispensable to union renewal in general, and successful organizing campaigns in particular. Our findings provide additional insight into the debate over top-down and bottom-up strategies for renewal, and raise several questions for future research regarding when, under what conditions, and under what rules worker activism matters for labour union renewal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]