Corporate Governance and Labour Management An International Comparison

This book is about the relationship between corporate governance regimes and labour management. It examines how finance and governance influence employment relationships, work organization, and industrial relations by means of a comparative analysis of Anglo-American, European, and Japaneseeconomies. The starting point is the distinction widely found in the corporate governance, business systems, and political economy literature between countries dominated by 'shareholder value' conceptions of corporate governance and those characterized by 'stakeholder' regimes. By drawing on a wide range ofcountries, the book is able to demonstrate the complexities of corporate governance arrangements and to present a more precise and nuanced exploration of the linkages between governance and labour management. Each country-based chapter provides an analysis of the evolution and key characteristics of corporate governance and then links this to labour management institutions and practices. The chapters cover the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, andSpain, with each written by a leading academic expert in the field. By providing a historical review of the evolution of national systems, the contributors provide judicious evaluations of the current state and future direction of national governance and labour relations systems. Overall, the book goes beyond the 'complementarities' between governance and labour management systems identified in recent literature, and attempts to identify causal relationships between the two. It shows how labour management institutions and practices may influence finance and corporategovernance systems, as well as vice versa. The contributions to this book illuminate current debates about the determinants of corporate governance, the convergence of national 'varieties of capitalism', and the impact of corporate governance on managerial behaviour. The book highlights thecomplexities of corporate governance systems and refines the distinction between market/outsider and relational/insider systems.

Howard Gospel is Professor of Management at King's College London, a Research Associate of the Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics, and a Fellow of the Said Business School, University of Oxford. Andrew Pendleton is Professor of Human Resource Management at the Business School of the Manchester Metropolitan University.