Comparative Political Economy of Work

An edited book in the Critical Perspectives on Work and Employment series associated with the annual International Labour Process Conference. The book focuses on comparative work and employment relations research conducted within a broader political economy framework. Written by leading academics, it contains cutting-edge research.

Marco Hauptmeier is a Lecturer in International HRM at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, UK. He holds a PhD from Cornell University, where he studied comparative employment relations and comparative political economy. Beyond these fields of studies, his research interests also include institutional theory and the role of ideologies at work. His articles have been published in Human Relations, Industrial Relations (Berkeley), the British Journal of Industrial Relations and the European Journal of Industrial Relations. He is the co-winner of the 2009 Thomas A. Kochan and Stephen R. Sleigh Best Dissertation Award, which recognized the best PhD thesis in employment relations in the USA. Marco has co-edited special issues with leading academic journals. He has co-edited a special issue of Human Relations on 'Beyond the Enterprise: Widening the Horizons on International HRM' and a special issue of the International Journal of Human Resource Management on 'Ideas at Work: The Social Construction of Employment Relations'.

Matt Vidal is a Lecturer in Work and Organizations at the Department of Management, King's College London, UK. Matt is on the editorial board of Work, Employment and Society, Co-Editor of the 'Organisations and Work' section of Sociology Compass, and Chief Editor of the blog for the Organizations, Occupations and Work section of the American Sociological Association. His research focuses on manufacturing work organization, low-wage work and labour markets, comparative political economy, and social theory. Matt's publications include 'On the Persistence of Labor Market Insecurity and Slow Growth in the US: Reckoning with the Waltonist Growth Regime', New Political Economy (forthcoming); 'Reworking Postfordism: Labor Process versus Employment Relations', Sociology Compass (2011); 'Temporary Employment and Strategic Staffing in the Manufacturing Sector', Industrial Relations (2009, with Leann M. Tigges); 'Routine Inefficiency: Operational Satisficing and Real-World Markets' in Research in the Sociology of Work (2009, JAI/Elsevier); 'Manufacturing Empowerment? Employee Involvement in the Labor Process after Fordism', Socio-Economic Review (2007); and 'Lean Production, Worker Empowerment, and Job Satisfaction: A Qualitative Analysis and Critique', Critical Sociology (2007). Matt is currently co-editing a special issue on Marxist approaches to organizational analysis for Organization Studies.

1. Comparative Political Economy and Labour Process Theory: Toward a Synthesis; Matt Vidal and Marco Hauptmeier
2. Varieties of Capitalism Reconsidered: Learning from the Great Recession and its Aftermath; Jason Heyes, Paul Lewis and Ian Clark
3. Do the UK and Australia Have Sustainable Business Models?; John Buchanan, Julie Froud, Sukhdev Johal, Karel Williams and Serena Yu
4. Incoherence and Dysfunctionality in the Institutional Regulation of Capitalism; Matt Vidal
5. Value Chains and Networks in Services – Crossing Borders, Crossing Sectors, Crossing Regimes?; Bettina Haidinger, Annika Schönauer, Jörg Flecker and Ursula Holtgrewe
6. Greening Steel Work: Varieties of Capitalism, the Environmental Agenda and Innovating for the Greening of the Labour Process; Claire Evans and Dean Stroud
7. Board-Level Employee Representatives in Norway, Sweden and Denmark: Differently Powerless or Equally Important?; Inger Marie Hagen
8. Ideas and Institutions: The Evolution of Employment Relations in the Spanish and German Auto Industry; Marco Hauptmeier & Glenn Morgan
9. Collapse of Collective Action? Employment Flexibility, Union Membership and Strikes in European Companies; Giedo Jansen and Agnes Akkerman
10. Coming to Terms with Firm-Level Diversity: An Investigation of Flexibility and Innovative Capability Profiles in the Transformed 'German Model'; Stefan Kirchner and Jürgen Beyer
11. Coordinated Divergences: Changes in Collective Bargaining Systems and Their Labour Market Implications in Korea; Hyunji Kwon and Sang-hoon Lim
12. The State and Employment in Liberal Market Economies: Industrial Policy in the UK Pharmaceutical and Food Manufacturing Sectors; Enda Hannon
13. Does Political Congruence Help Us Understand Trade Union Renewal?; Martin Upchurch, Richard Croucher and Matt Flynn
14. Quality of Work in the Cleaning Industry: A Complex Picture Based on Sectoral Regulation and Customer-Driven Conditions; Vassil Kirov, Monique Ramioul
15. Posted Migration, Spaces of Exception, and the Politics of Labour Relations in the European Construction Industry; Nathan Lillie, Ines Wagner and Lisa Berntsen
16. Employment Relations Under External Pressure: Italian and Spanish Reforms During the Great Recession; Guglielmo Meardi