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This paper develops and extends the existing body of literature on human resource management (HRM) and contextual uncertainty. We identify and explore the consequences of present uncertainties of a broad scale and scope for the practice of HRM. We then review salient bodies of theorising, and map out relevant areas of application. This is followed by a presentation of some of the most recent work on uncertainty and HRM that is encompassed in this collection, which brings to bear evidence from around the world.

Research Question/Issue: There has been growing concern about rising social inequality and its effects on general well-being and the polity. Much of this rise can be traced to changes in the manner in which corporations or firms are governed and how this impacts on income and wealth dispersion. This study systematically reviews the most recent literature on external and internal corporate governance (CG) that deals with the issue of income and wealth inequality. Research Findings/Insights: External mechanisms such as institutional regime (defined in terms of varieties of capitalism—liberal or coordinated markets) and financialization reveal important insights, often implicitly, into what makes or sustains inequality. The rise of the platform business model raises explicit concerns about increasing wealth and wage inequality. This is because it is associated with a rapidly growing precariat of gig workers, Big Tech entrepreneurs with untrammeled levels of control and extreme levels of personal wealth, and widespread tax avoidance despite record profits. The literature on internal CG is somewhat constrained in its reliance on agency theory and a focus on shareholder primacy. This only provides limited insights on how internal CG mechanisms impact on inequality. However, in recent work, the issue of perverse incentives posed by CEO reward systems and their impact on organizational sustainability and wage dispersion are receiving increasing attention. Theoretical/Academic Implications: Some studies do attempt to widen the lens, and we suggest a greater focus on theorizing codetermination and alternate forms of ownership, non-monetary incentives, the power of the Big Tech companies, and those strands of comparative institutional analyses that explore the determinants of internal CG structures. Practitioner/Policy Implications: The study reasserts the importance of the firm as a central analytical paradigm in understanding income and wealth inequality and that, in seeking to ameliorate the latter's negative consequences, more attention needs to be accorded to the governance and regulation of firms.

This article sketches the theory of debt finance and cites historical evidence on the sustainability of debt. If it is accepted that the future should under the current circumstances of COVID‐19 help to alleviate the problems of the present, then debt finance is in principle appropriate. It need not lead to an explosive rise in the debt‐to‐GNP ratio. British history shows that the theory can work in practice. A satisfactory outcome, however, depends on government being reliable, honest, and competent. Trust is easily lost and hard to restore.

This review article supplements and extends earlier reviews on the state and practice of HRM and employment in Africa, encompassing earlier landmark empirical studies. Work published from 2014 is r...

The discipline of management and organization has been presented as being rife with paradox. Cameron and Quinn (1988) referred to a paradox as a concept embracing contradiction and the clashing of ideas, “contradictory, mutually exclusive elements that are present and operate equally at the same time” (p. 2). For Van de Ven and Poole (1988, p. 22), paradox refers to “the real or apparent contradiction between equally well-based assumptions or conclusions”. More recently, Smith and Lewis (2011, p. 382) deemed paradox as “contradictory yet interrelated elements that exist simultaneously and persist over time”. A burgeoning literature on paradox, plurality, contradiction and dialectics (Cunha et al., 2020; Cunha and Putnam, 2019; Putnam et al., 2016; Schad et al., 2016) has mostly treated the theme in accordance to traditions of East and West and even from disciplinary areas as distant as quantum theory (Hahn and Knight, 2019). Yet, we have until now failed to systematically analyze paradox lessons from African organizations.

Various strands of the comparative capitalisms (CC) literature agree that the advanced economies have liberalized in recent years, bringing with it rising income and wealth inequality and job insecurity; although these perspectives differ in important ways, there is much common ground between them to explain this heightened level of inequality and insecurity. Through reviewing contributions to three key CC perspectives since 2007/2008, we argue that they have tended to focus on developments in co-ordinated market economies, leading to a neglect of growing structural crises in liberal market economies, which have contributed to the UK and the USA entering uncharted socio-political waters. We extend recent work that emphasizes how variation between countries in labour-market institutions, different corporate forms and states’ fiscal policies help to explain income and wealth inequality to highlight future research agendas that seek to combine more systematically these institutional areas to explain social inequalities, workers’ experiences and socio-political crises within capitalist systems.

Inspired by burgeoning scholarly interest in the role of digitalization in the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper examines how the COVID-19 pandemic is driving or constraining the digitalization of businesses around the globe. We contend that COVID‐19 is “the great accelerator” in fast-tracking the existing global trend towards embracing modern emerging technologies ushering in transformations in lifestyle, work patterns, and business strategies. Thus, COVID-19 has evolved to be a kind of “catalyst” for the adoption and increasing use of digitalization in work organization and the office, alongside presenting foreseen and unforeseen opportunities, challenges, and costs—leading to negative and positive feedback loops. In this article, we develop and advance a conceptual model by linking the different forces for and against digitalization in response to the pandemic. Our analysis indicates that adoption of emerging technologies may be hindered by vested external interests, nostalgia, and employer opportunism, as well as negative effects on employee well-being that undermine productivity, work–life balance, and future of work. Whilst digitalization may bring new opportunities, the process imparts risks that may be hard to mitigate or prepare for. Finally, we draw out the wider theoretical and practical implications of our analysis.

PurposeThe central purpose of this paper is to explore how implicit knowledge capabilities and sharing helps secure organizational survival and success. This article explores the challenging in better management knowledge in the South African clothing and textile industry. In moving from a closed protected market supported by active industrial policy, South African manufacturing has faced intense competition from abroad. The ending of apartheid removed a major source of workplace tension, facilitating the adoption of higher value-added production paradigms. However, most South African clothing and textile firms have battled to cope, given cutthroat international competition. The authors focus on firms that have accorded particularly detailed attention to two instances characterized by innovative knowledge management. The authors highlight how circumstances may impose constraints and challenges and how they paradoxically also create opportunities, which may enable firms to survive and thrive through the recognition and utilization of informal knowledge, both individual and collective.Design/methodology/approachThis study is based on in-depth interviews, primary company and industry association and secondary documents.FindingsThe study highlights how successful firms implemented systems, policies and practices for the better capturing and utilization of external and internal knowledge. In terms of the former, a move toward fast fashion required and drove far-reaching organizational restructuring and change. This made for a greater integration of knowledge through the value chain, ranging from design to retail. Successful firms also owed their survival to the recognition and usage of internal informal knowledge. At the same time this process was not without tensions and paradoxes, and the findings suggest that many of the solutions followed a process of experimentation. The latter is in sharp contrast to many South African manufacturers, who, with the global articulation of production networks, have lost valuable knowledge on suppliers and their practices. At the same time, both firms have to contend with an increasingly unpredictable international environment.Research limitations/implicationsAt a theoretical level, the study points to the need to see informal knowledge not only in individualistic terms but also as a phenomenon that has collective, and indeed, communitarian features. Again, it highlights the challenges of nurturing and optimizing informal knowledge. It shows how contextual features both constrain and enable this process. It further highlights the extent to which the effective utilization of external knowledge, and rapid responses to external developments, may require a fundamental rethinking of organizational structures and hierarchies. This study focuses on a limited number of dimensions of this in a single national context but could be replicated and extended into other contexts.Practical implicationsThe study highlights the relationship between survival, success and how knowledge is managed. This involved harnessing the informal knowledge and capabilities of workforce to enhance productivity, in conjunction with improvements in machinery and processes, and a much closer integration of design, supply, production and marketing, underpinned by a more effective usage of IT. Paradoxically, other clothing and textile firms have survived doing the exact opposite – reverting to low value-added cut-and-trim assembly operations. At a policy level, the study highlights how specific features of South African regulation (above all, in terms of job protection), which are often held up as barriers to competiveness, may help sustain the knowledge base of firms.Social implicationsThe preservation and creation of jobs in a highly competitive sector was bound up with effective knowledge management. The study also highlighted the mutual interdependence of employers and employees in a context of very high unemployment and how the more effective usage of informal knowledge bound both sides closer.Originality/valueThere is a fairly diverse body of literature on manufacturing in South Africa, and, indeed across the continent; however, much of it has focused on challenges. This study explores relative success stories from a sector that has faced a structural crisis of competitiveness, and as such, has relevance to understanding how firms and industries may cope in highly adverse circumstances.

This article reviews the present state of research on multinational corporations (MNCs) in the international human resource management (IHRM) literature. Drawing on 342 articles from 39 English journals in the business and management field published over the period of 2000–2014, we identify three key strands within this section of the IHRM scholarly field (MNC country of origin/domicile effects; expatriate management; and, intra-organizational knowledge and strategy flows). Building up on our detailed assessment of trends in the literature based on a systematic review, we propose areas where the field could be developed and extended through drawing on insights from, and building synthesis with, cognate fields. We conclude that major developments on the ground – the increasing numbers of unskilled expatriate workers, the rise of MNCs from emerging markets, and the growth of transnational alternative investors – have the potential to transform the field of enquiry, yet are only starting to appear in the IHRM literature. In developing new major areas of enquiry – and in extending existing ones – insights may be drawn from the literature on comparative institutional analysis to take fuller account of trans-national actors.

We compare actual R&D spend with the managerial rhetoric around technology and innovation contained within corporate disclosures of US-listed firms. We find that, whilst actual R&D spend and patents do not entice institutional investors to increase their stock holdings, firms that espouse technology and innovation in their corporate disclosures are quite successful in drawing in short-term horizon investors. Yet, such firms are more prone to future sudden idiosyncratic stock price crashes. Although it may seem that talk of technology and innovation represents a self-interested managerial effort to retain investors’ expectations, this would not explain why so many short-term horizon investors opt for such stocks in the face of persistent evidence of adverse market performance outcomes. As suggested by the economics of expectation, investors may become reluctant to timely face up to bad news in terms of unfulfilled technology and innovation outcomes, a behaviour that can hype investors’ expectations and overinflate stock prices for long periods. Eventually, when such investors become disillusioned by unjustifiable expectations that enables them to better discern the firm’s true state of economic fundamentals, the sudden and abrupt decline in their expectations triggers extreme firm-specific left-tail outcomes.

The rise of populism has been widely ascribed, at least in part, to an inability of national systems to generate decent employment or, indeed, stem its decline. This article explores the basis and nature of variations in labour market outcomes of different institutional regimes. For this comparative institutional analysis, we build indexes of labour market outcomes in the OECD countries, measuring actual cross-country variations and encompassing a much wider range of evidence in terms of countries and time periods covered than previous studies. We show that in terms of job availability and wages, the liberal market economies (LMEs) have advantages, but once involuntary part-time employment and wage inequality are considered, labour market outcomes appear superior in the continental European countries and the Scandinavia social democracies. However, any advantages of the LMEs appear to be diminishing since the global financial crisis. Compared with other regimes, Southern European and transitional economies have lower level of job availability and wage rates but are comparable in other aspects of the labour market.

This study examines the impacts of quality of working environment and its components on corporate financial distress. Employing a unique dataset of firm-level data from 41 countries over the period of 2012–2018, we find that a better working environment is related to a higher level of financial soundness. Particularly, firms which have better training and career development policies are less likely to take excessive risks. Further examination suggests that the quality of working environment tends to affect corporate financial risk by influencing firms’ cash holding policies.

This study explores how HRM and trust are inter-related, and what this means for how we understand HRM under different varieties of capitalism. We explore the direct impact of different indicators of societal trust on intra-organizational HRM practice, using a large-scale\ud internationally comparative survey evidence. We find that countries with high levels of associational trust, such as the Nordic social democracies, are generally associated with better communication and co-determination over the setting of the employment contract. The converse was true for countries with lower levels of associational trust, such as the liberal market economies. We failed to encounter any significant effects of multinationality or\ud country of origin in the case of MNCs; they did not differ significantly from their domestic peers when it came to the relationship between country of domicile levels of associational trust and HRM practice. We draw out the implications for theory and practice.

The opportunity to share your ideas with a wider audience is one of the most rewarding parts of being an academic. Finding your work side by side with leading scholars in the field, and being part of a wider debate is very much part of this. However, while getting published is considerably easier than coming up with genuinely new ideas, the task brings with it its own challenges; some, but not all, are due to the expansion of the business school ecosystem, with increasing numbers of schools raising their requirements as to where and how much scholars should publish. Most quality journals reject the overwhelming majority of submissions. Hence, publishing in leading journals has become increasingly competitive. This short review seeks to provide some insights to maximize your chances of success.

State interventions in markets assume varieties of forms in different economic systems. To capture this variety, we consider state capitalism as a multidimensional concept, first reviewing its historical evolution from both practical and scholarly vantages. We describe several dimensions of state capitalism and demonstrate how cross-national variations can be captured through positioning countries along these dimensions. We use cross-sectional data for a large sample of countries to derive factors that represent key dimensions of state capitalism. We demonstrate how cross-national and historical variation in state capitalism is captured by this Virtual Special Issue and offer suggestions for future research.

Are multinational enterprises (MNEs) makers or takers of corruption? This review focuses on corruption in the multinational context to highlight issues specific to MNEs, and captures 139 articles from 75 English journals over the period of 1999−2020. Our review not only highlights common themes around the contextual challenges facing MNEs, but also how a key strand of the literature focuses attention on the role of MNEs as active agents in corrupt practices. It is often implied that corruption is something endemic to the emerging markets, which MNEs from the north have to cope with if they have to do business there, rather than what significant numbers of such firms actively instigate or sustain. Hence, we challenge predominantly western perspectives informed by institutional-economic analyses that too often, pose a false dichotomy between the global north and global south. We draw out the implications for theorizing based on recent comparative institutional theorizing.

This paper explores the main forces impacting diversity and the role of women at senior management and board level in finance. In addition, it offers a synopsis of selected research examining the board composition, corporate social responsibility and external corporate governance. We focus mainly on empirical papers that employ quasi-natural experiments and textual analysis to confirm the interdisciplinary nature of diversity. Further, we identify priorities for future research that can advance our understanding on this research area, and the broader field of financial studies, encompassing the growing interest in the boundaries between the economic, the psychological and the social.

This study examines the determinants of outward foreign direct investment (FDI) from Latin American countries and compares it with their OECD counterparts. Our analysis is based on a sample of 45 countries, 13 from Latin America and 32 from the OECD, over the period 2001–2012. We find that the outward FDI from Latin America is more likely to be located in geographically proximate countries and in countries with similar culture and language than that from their OECD counterparts. We also show that Latin American outward FDI is less likely to be resource seeking. This presumably reflects the rich natural resource endowments and agricultural potential in major Latin American countries. Further, outward FDI from Latin America is more likely to be concentrated in countries with a similar corruption environment than that from their OECD counterparts. This might indicate a broadly similar nature of corruption across Latin America due to shared cultural, political and economic legacies.

Crisis situations, which may range from natural disasters to military conflicts, from stock market crashes to life-threatening diseases, frequently trigger state interventions that can be described...

PurposeThe resource curse literature suggests that firms operating in non-oil and non-gas industries in petrostates face considerable challenges in securing competitiveness and sustaining themselves. Based on a firm-level survey within a micro-petrostate, Brunei, the purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between specific HR policies and practices and organisational performance; analyse, compare, and contrast oil and gas with non-oil and non-gas sectors; and draw out the comparative lessons for understanding the potential and performance consequences of HR interventions in resource-centred national economies.Design/methodology/approachData for this study were generated from a primary survey administered amongst the HR directors in companies operating in all sectors in Brunei. A statistically representative sample size of 214 was selected.FindingsThe authors confirmed that firms in the oil and gas sector indeed performed better than other sectors. However, the authors found that the negative effects associated with operating outside of oil and gas could be mitigated through strategic choices: the strategic involvement of HR directors in the affairs of the company reduced employee turnover and added positively to financial returns across sectors.Practical implicationsDeveloping and enhancing the role of people management is still very much easier than bringing about structural institutional reforms: the study confirms that at least part of the solution to contextual difficulties lies within, and that the firm-level consequences of the resource curse can be ameliorated through a strategic choice.Originality/valueThe nature of the present investigation is one of few studies conducted in South East Asia in general and in the context of Brunei, in particular. It also contributes to the authors’ understanding whether HR interventions can ameliorate the challenges of operating in a non-resource sector in a resource-rich country.

This article revisits contemporary union renewal/revival debates through comparison with the late 1930s resurgence of trade unionism in the UK’s engineering industry. It is argued that the 1930s union renewal arose from more favourable contextual conditions than those currently obtaining. It was led by political activists, with better-articulated organisation and greater resonance in the working class than their contemporary counterparts, who were assisted by state policy and pro-worker forces. Conclusions are drawn in relation to current debates.

The contributions to this book highlight a number of challenges and frustrations, opportunities and surprises facing attempts to manage the decline of fossil fuels, representing a complex interplay of factors, both optimistic and pessimistic and often a mixture of both, as the world grapples with the shift towards a low-carbon energy future. In addition to specific conclusions drawn from the individual contributions, this chapter emphasises two distinctive conclusions regarding the need to manage the decline of fossil fuels. First, although the energy system is in a state of flux between the old (conventional, centralised, high carbon) and the new (alternative, decentralised, low carbon) no new state has been achieved. And, despite progress to date, the ‘tipping point’ between the states has yet to be reached. This is the paradox of energy transition: growth in renewables and low-carbon energy sources but no concomitant decline in fossil fuels overall. Second, and more positive, there are clear signs of system change and transition, evidenced in the energy systems of many nations across the world. In short, traditional approaches are being queried and found lacking and alternative approaches are becoming mainstream and normalised. This book shows that it is possible to manage the decline of fossil fuels. So the question remains, is there sufficient time left to do so within the urgent timeframe that we as a species have set ourselves?

The business systems approach seeks to explain why and how economic activities are carried out in different ways in different economies. It seeks to explain, in short, patterns of economic coordination and firms’ attendant capabilities. In order to explain this outcome, the business systems framework focuses not only on external and governance dimensions, but also practices within two broad categories: delegation (employee involvement and participation) and interdependence between employers and employees (employees’ security of tenure and firms’ investment in people). The approach establishes a useful analytical template for applied comparative analysis to identify the institutional causes of variation in intra-organizational practices. The business approach, therefore, draws attention to fundamental firm variation, unlike many perspectives in business and management that tend to emphasize firm homogeneity, and the impact of that variation on important outcomes for firms, employees and societies.

This article explores the role of the formal network centrality of top management teams (TMT) for foreign expansion, looking at the case of Chinese firms. The former is defined by the degree to which top managers are connected with TMTs of other firms in formal ways, through service as independent board members. We explore boundary conditions, comparing state ownership with political ties. The analysis of a panel data of 489 firms expanding to 72 developed and developing host markets in the period 2000–2012 confirms that network centrality facilitates internationalization. We found that TMT network centrality had a stronger effect on internationalization in developed than emerging markets. Conversely, state ownership had a positive moderating effect in the latter and political ties a negative effect in developed ones. The literature on comparative institutional analysis suggests that formal ties are more important in developed economies, and informal ties in emerging ones. However, formal political ties and/or links to the Chinese state may be more of value in internationalizing into other emerging markets, where the balance of diplomatic power may be more skewed in China’s favor.

State interventions in markets assume varieties of forms in different economic systems. To capture this variety, we consider state capitalism as a multidimensional concept, first reviewing its historical evolution from both practical and scholarly vantages. We describe several dimensions of state capitalism and demonstrate how cross-national variations can be captured through positioning countries along these dimensions. We use cross-sectional data for a large sample of countries to derive factors that represent key dimensions of state capitalism. We demonstrate how cross-national and historical variation in state capitalism is captured by this Virtual Special Issue and offer suggestions for future research.

Guanxi is a key construct in Chinese management and organization scholarship, and has been widely treated as a relational concept. However, it is necessary to gain a nuanced and contextualized understanding of Guanxi to examine its cultural antecedents by resorting to traditional Chinese cultures. We draw upon the emerging literature on ambidexterity and HRM to examine Guanxi in the context of superior-subordinate relationship and conceptualize ambidextrous Guanxi as possessing two orientations: relational and merit-based. To investigate ambidextrous Guanxi in the context of superior-subordinate relationship, we perform in-depth, qualitative narrative interviews with managers in Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs). Our results reveal three dimensions: loyalty, dependence upon supervisor, and work priority by which ambidextrous Guanxi enables, facilitates, and accommodates the tension between individual career advancement and commitment to the organization. From a cultural inquiry perspective, we argue that Confucianism and Legalism, as cultural antecedents of ambidextrous Guanxi, shed light on its contemporary managerial implications. Our findings suggest that Guanxi can be considered as a strategic HR asset and enhance performance outcomes both at the individual level (career advancement) and the organizational level (commitment to the organization).

This paper reviews the existing evidence base on the practice of people management in the context of post-state socialist countries of Asia. The focus is on Asian successor states of the Soviet Union and those under direct Soviet domination. In an undeniably diverse region, in all the countries under review there appears to be a disarticulation between liberal market reforms, economic progress, the ability to attract FDI and the development and persistence of a formal employment base. Extended informal networks of support often play an important role, inter alia, in informing recruitment, although clan based networks appear as quite impermeable to outsiders. Regulatory coverage is uneven but in many instances job protection is high. Drawing on the available research base, this paper consolidates and extends the existing state of knowledge on people management within the institutional contexts examined and draws out the implications for theorising and practice. The study highlights how reforms in one area may lead to counter-movements in others, shoring up existing modes of people management. Again, whilst clans and middle classes both have channels for political advocacy, there are fewer opportunities for workers and their representatives; this means that there is little impetus for legislation to promote better practice, workplace inclusivity and equity.

This study evaluates how middle and front-line managers contribute to organizational ambidexterity through their engagement with long-standing organizational dilemmas, supplementing earlier senior management focused work. Based on a multi-level exploratory study conducted within the UK health and social care sector, we investigate how middle and front-line managers were able to work on a collective and redistributive basis to address the tension between exploratory and exploitative innovation. Middle managers served as ‘horizontal integrators’ facilitating the emergence of shared understandings, learning capabilities and the distribution of knowledge-based resources, a process shaped by the constraints and opportunities provided by the broader intra-corporate environment. We conclude that the transition to ambidextrous working was impeded by restrictive bureaucratic dimensions, and facilitated by a distributed pattern of interaction, shared responsibility and more empowering bureaucratic forms.

The Academy of Management Perspectives (AMP) is unique within the community of management journals in that it focuses on critically making sense of existing theory and evidence, rather than ab initio contributions to theory or summaries of existing states of the literature. This mission reflects a particularly pressing challenge to our field of research. While empirical management journals have steadily increased the analytical sophistication and quality of the data in the research they publish, the same cannot be said for contributions to theory. In this paper, we explore some of the common weaknesses in the way some theories are deployed, and consider the questions emanating from building and using theory. We recognize there is a vast literature on the problems of theorizing (Arend et al., 2016; Koontz, 1961; Tsoukas, 2017). We also acknowledge the many excellent publications on writing theory (e.g., Barney, 2018; Clark, Wright & Ketchen, 2016). Hence, our purpose is not so much to revisit these themes but to motivate a conversation that will lead to more meaningful theory and, ultimately, impact on practice. Kurt Lewin observed long ago that there is nothing so practical as a good theory (Lewin, 1951). We proceed by providing some evidence for the routine misapplication of theory. We then illustrate what we mean by contrasting the applications of institutional theory, agency theory, and the resource-based view, and some of the confusion this has created. Finally, we suggest some solutions for this problem and the questions that scholars might ask themselves before deploying a theory.

This study explores the effect of directors’ political contributions on IPOs’ valuation and subsequent performance. We find that individual contributions by directors bring significant benefits to the IPO firms. Specifically, we show that political contributions of board members, particularly those of CEOs and founders, increase the IPO premium and the long-term performance of the IPO firms. These findings do not depend on the directors’ political ideology or party affiliations and are robust to endogeneity concerns and to alternative measures of political donations and IPO performance. As a possible consequence of Citizens United, we also find that individual contributions of IPOs directors have tripled, with a trajectory of further increase. Our results confirm the relevance of signaling and resource dependence theories.

A range of studies has found that corruption has a significant impact upon FDI decisions, however to date there has been scant investigation into longer term investments made by firms and their relative proclivity to reinvest. Further, there is particularly little work on reinvestment choices made on the transitional periphery of post-state socialist countries and how these might differ from the more stable transitional economies of central and Eastern Europe. Utilising 2005 World Bank Enterprise Survey data, this study explores the relationship between corruption and MNEs’ strategic decision to reinvest profits. From an institutionalist starting point, we find variation in the impact of different dimensions of corruption upon reinvestment; pervasive corruption impacts negatively upon reinvestment, but its effects are more pronounced in the transitional periphery. Perceived robust legal institutions have a positive correlation with reinvestment, but again, the positive effects are less pronounced on the transitional peripheral state socialist states. We ascribe this disparity to greater institutional fluidity, and explore why this context has particularly adverse effects. Finally, we find that firm level attributes of larger size and greater age play an important role in positive reinvestment decisions, appearing to mitigate the worst consequences of this fluidity.

The informal economy accounts for the bulk of employment in many emerging economies. Regulation theory suggests that all economic activity is characterized by a complex combination of formal and informal regulation. Looking at the case of Mozambique, this article explores the pressures towards and against formalization, and the forms regulation can take, drawing on qualitative research based on in-depth elite interviews and observation. The findings highlight how the State's role in promoting formalization of the informal economy is ambivalent; its approach incorporates both “progressive” elements, which focus on the modernization of regulations and institutions, and “conservative” elements, which inhibit this process of change.

This is a study centred on the impact of the specific set of HRM practices on organisational performance (OP) within an emerging market setting. It seeks to explore which HR practices are most closely associated with better OP within the financial services industry in Jordan based on a survey of managers and the annual reports of the companies encompassed by the study. It was found that the only HR practice seen to consistently impact on OP was training; in other words, we did not encounter any recognisable ‘bundle’ of HR practices that optimised OP across the sector. We argue that this reflects the weaker and more partially coupled nature of institutions in many emerging markets, which makes it difficult to generate the type of complementarities associated between regulation and practice in mature markets. It also reflects the limited transferability of perceived best practice models in the context of emerging market settings. Although belied by objective firm performance data, many respondents believed that it was not only training but also the extensive usage of extrinsic incentives (pay and promotion) that would translate into superior results. This highlights the limitations of relying on managerial reported performance data in exploring the consequences of specific HR practices.

This is a study based on comparative transnational survey evidence from across Europe. It examines recent trends in the use of external providers to manage human resources and how this use has changed since the global economic crisis that began in 2008. The study shows that the use of external HRM providers significantly decreased following the onset of the crisis; this would indicate that firms primarily perceived it as a luxury or something that could support discretionary managerial initiatives rather than a means for making firms more efficient or contributing to more added value. In addition, after 2008 a large number of firms abandoned their HRM function entirely, probably because of the increase in cheap, easily disposable labor in many national contexts. The study reveals that these trends were most pronounced in the emerging market economies of Central and Eastern Europe. The consequences of the crisis appear to have contributed to enhancing national differences instead of bringing the national contexts closer together.

The economic pressures associated with the unification of markets, the deregulation of financial services, the homogenization of consumer taste and the scaling back of tariff barriers have placed specific pressures on both emerging and established democracies. To Perry Anderson (2000), these two developments have led to a contradictory situation, where well-established autocracies from Indonesia to apartheid South Africa have been dismantled, yet democracy has been weakened at its core. In new and established democracies, corporate interests are moulding and confining the political discourse within increasingly narrow limits (Hertz 2001).

1: Introduction - Trade Unions and democracy: possibilities and contradictions 2: Trade unions and theories of democracy 3: Neo-Liberal reforms and accords: are they compatible with democracy? 4: Trade unions and democracy: can the third way recast the lnk? 5: Unions and non-standard employment 6: New forms of work and the representational gap: a Durban case study 7: The changing impact and strength of the labour movement in advanced societies 8: The U.S. and Canadian labour movements: markets vs. states and societies 9: The rise and fall of the organizing model in the US 10: Union growth and reversal in newly industrialised countries: The case of South Korea and peripheral workers 11: The rise of unions in semi-industrialized countries: the cases of South Africa and Zimbabwe 12: Social movement unionism 13: Unions and politics 14: Trade union democracy: the dynamics of different forms 15: Unions and social partnerships 16: Engagement or disengagement? unions and a new politics 17: Conclusion

This article presents a conceptual framework to advance the understanding of the process and pitfalls of post-merger integration (PMI) across national boundaries. We argue that successful PMI is contingent on employee emotional resilience, which, in turn, depends on the efficacy of reward systems and of the underlying equity. The paper documents the key role played by financial and non-financial rewards, and of reciprocal behaviors conditioned by fairness norms, on employee emotional resilience during PMI, and the impact on them of contextual dynamics. We draw out the implications for theory and practice, again taking into special account of mergers across national boundaries, and those involving multinational enterprises (MNEs).

Economic pressures were the predominant motivation that prompted the 1990 decision by South Africa's former apartheid government to commence serious negotiations with the principal opposition movements. In turn, the crisis of racial Fordism—a production paradigm centering on traditional mass production methods coupled with the racial division of labor and the wider subordination of South Africa's black majority—was worsened by waves of mass resistance, encompassing the mass strikes of 1973 and 1974, the 1976 Soweto uprising, and, finally and most importantly, the mass insurrection of the 1980s. This study focuses on the experiences of political activists in Grahamstown, a secondary urban center in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, drawing primarily on the life histories of nine individuals. The narratives presented in the chapter originate from a life history research project on the memories of former political activists. The activists reflect on and articulate their involvement in the struggle leading to South Africa's political transformation.

By using the classic works of Durkheim as a theoretical platform, this research explores the relationship between legal systems and social solidarity. We found that certain types of civil law system, most notably those of Scandinavia, are associated with higher levels of social capital and better welfare state provision. However, we found the relationship between legal system and societal outcomes is considerably more complex than suggested by currently fashionable economistic legal origin approaches, and more in line with the later writings of Durkheim, and, indeed, the literature on comparative capitalisms. Relative communitarianism was strongly affected by relative development, reflecting the complex relationship between institutions, state capabilities and informal social ties and networks.

Defence industrial participation (DIP) is a form of countertrade and falls in the sub-category of (defence) offsets. The South African DIP programme played a developmental role in the country’s defence industrial base (DIB), arresting its steady decline since the 1980s. This article discusses the perceived non-achievement of the 1997 DIP objectives and the reality of its manifestations over a 12-year period (2000–2012). It is argued that the DIP tripled the gross national product and improved the economy through the retention of some 58 000 jobs. However, the 2014 Defence Review paves the way for a new defence industrial dispensation. Notwithstanding, there is a need to explore the concomitant ambiguity that exists between perceptions of countertrade and offsets as trade-distorting practices and as value-adding prospects, and to ascertain how this reciprocal trade mechanism could be used better to promote the developmental aims and objectives of governments.

Finally, we return to the beginning. Our discussion of the future prospects of renewable and low carbon energy in Scotland ends, as it began all these years ago, with the country facing the prospect of a referendum on independence, but now those prospects look decidedly different. North Sea oil prices have fallen‚ and the dream of carbon capture and storage has died, but with the people of England and Wales having voted to leave the European Union the mood of the nation has changed again, and the dream of independence is more alive than ever. Uncertain times and a plethora of risks lie ahead but, as these collected essays illustrate, now the greatest risk to Scotland’s renewable energy future lies not with cutting ties to the rest of the UK, but cutting ties with the renewable energy powerhouses of the European Union. We live in interesting times.

Aye. Naw. Mibbe (Yes. No. Maybe). Three words that capture the astonishing and unparalleled series of recent events in Scottish politics held in a Death Star-like grip by the issues of independence, devolution, governance and the right for Scotland to gain increasing control over its own affairs. This chapter sets out the unique focus of the book on Scottish renewable and low-carbon energy policy and practice, as the independence debate returns with a vengeance on the back of the UK ‘Brexit’ referendum. Whilst the Scottish Government has racked up numerous achievements in decarbonising the energy sector with substantial deployment of renewable energy, there are still challenges to be overcome. As this chapter highlights, the emphasis of this book is therefore very much on the critical regarding the implications of the independence debate going forward, with emphasis on what this means for renewable and low-carbon technologies.

There is a growing controversy as to the impact of private equity acquisitions, especially in terms of their impact on employment and subsequent organizational performance. It has been suggested that closer owner supervision and the injection of a new management team revitalize the acquired organization and unlock dormant capabilities and value. However, both politicians and trade unionists suggest that private equity acquirers may significantly reallocate value away from employees to short term investors, typically through layoffs and reduced wages, which may undermine future organizational sustainability. This article investigates this in the context of a sample of institutional buy outs (IBOs) undertaken in the UK between 1997 and 2006. Specifically we examine the impact of IBOs on both employment and remuneration against two control groups of non-acquired firms. In designing our study we follow the empirical approach taken by Conyon et al., 2001 and Conyon et al., 2002 in investigating the employment consequences of regular takeovers. Our main finding is a significant loss in employment in firms subject to an IBO in the year immediately following the acquisition as well as lower wage rates, when compared to either of the two control groups. Furthermore, we find no evidence of a subsequent improvement either in productivity or profitability in the acquired businesses.

In this article, we explore what determines the decisions of emerging-market multinational corporations (MNCs) to invest in Africa and whether this is any different from their counterparts in mature markets, focusing on the HRM context. More specifically, we explore the effect of potential host-country wages, local capabilities, and the relative rights of owners versus workers on foreign direct investment (FDI) decisions, as well as other relevant factors such as mineral resources and corruption. We found that emerging-market MNCs were not deterred by relatively weak property owner rights (as indeed, was also the case for their counterparts from mature markets); hence, any weakening of countervailing worker rights is unlikely to unlock significant new FDI. However, emerging-market MNCs were more likely to invest in low-wage economies and did not appear to be concerned by local skills gaps; the latter would reflect the relative de facto ease with which even partially skilled expatriate labor can be imported into many African countries. At the same time, a reliance on low-wage, unskilled labor, coupled with the extensive usage of expatriates, brings with it a wide range of challenges for the HR manager, which a firm committed to cost-cutting may lack the capabilities to resolve.

Over the past twenty years central bank independence has been embraced enthusiastically almost worldwide. Led by New Zealand, where monetary policy had been politicised in the sense of being used for short term political advantage with damaging effects for the economy, the idea that giving the central bank responsibility for and control over monetary policy would lead to better monetary performance caught on almost worldwide. More and more countries gave their central bank independence. Some countries, indeed, did it as a way of demonstrating the intention to be monetarily responsible – that was the declared intention of, for example, the Labour government that took office in Britain in 1997.