New Frontiers and Trajectories in Labour–Management Relations

It is still a common assumption that labour-management relations are about trade unions, collective bargaining, and strikes. While these issues remain crucial, today's conceptual terrain is much broader.

New Frontiers and Trajectories in Labour-Management Relations goes beyond a focus on the outcomes of work and employment, to elaborate how different actors' roles at multiple levels of analysis shape labour-management relationships and workplace behaviours. It explores the political economy of work and labour-management relationships by considering the role of different labour market institutions in the governance of work and employment, as well as how these institutions shape and are shaped by power and conflict in work and labour-management relationships.

Approaching the subject as a broad multidisciplinary social science field, the volume features contributions from leading international experts on work, employment, and labour-management relations, encompassing thinking from economics, sociology, and law, to history, political science, and industrial-organizational (I-O) psychology. With this diversity of perspectives, the volume provides an eclectic framing of how work and employment relationships are formed and coordinated across time, space, and place.

Jonathan Lavelle is an Associate Professor in the Department of Work and Employment Studies, Kemmy Business School at the University of Limerick. He is a former IRCHSS Post-doctoral fellow, IRCHSS Government of Ireland Scholar, and Marie Curie Scholar. His main research interests are in the field of international and comparative employment relations and human resource management with a particular interest in trade union recognition and avoidance, employee voice, living wage, and precarious work. Lavelle has published in leading international peer reviewed journals, as well as books and book chapters.

Tony Dobbins is Professor of Work and Employment Relations at University of Birmingham, UK. He researches employment relations, employee voice and democracy at work, better work, living wages and low pay, sociology of work, flexible working, and labour markets. He is a former Parliamentary Academic Fellow in the UK Parliament, and former British Universities Industrial Relations Association president. Dobbins is Visiting Professor at the University of Malta and University of Limerick, Ireland.

Dionne Pohler is the David and Alexandra Lipsky Professor of Dispute Resolution at the Cornell University ILR School Department of Global Labor and Work, and a research fellow at the Canadian Centre for the Study of Co-operatives located at the University of Saskatchewan. Her research is on conflict and dispute resolution, co-operative governance, rural issues, public policy, unions, labour/employment laws, and HR practices. She edited the Labor and Employment Relations Association annual research volume, Reimagining the Governance of Work and Employment (2020) and co-edited Building Inclusive Communities in Rural Canada (2023).

Tony Dundon is Professor of HRM and Employment Relations in the Department of Work and Employment Studies, Kemmy Business School at the University of Limerick. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS); a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts (FRSA); and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (FCIPD). His research is on employee voice, trade unions, and work and technology. He is Visiting Professor at the Work and Equalities Institute, University of Manchester.

1. Introduction: New Frontiers and Trajectories in Labour-Management Relations, Tony Dobbins, Jonathan Lavelle, Dionne Pohler, and Tony Dundon2. Competing Frames of Reference on the Employment Relationship and Their Importance for the Study of Work, John W. Budd, John Kammeyer-Mueller, and Dionne Pohler3. Understanding the 'New' Employment Relationship, Caroline Murphy, Rizki Amalia, and Ann-Marie Creaven4. Why Governance and Regulation Matters: The Relevance of Debates on Systems of Employment Regulation and Governance for Understanding Labour-Management Relations at the Workplace, Robert MacKenzie and Miguel Martínez Lucio5. New Actors in Labour-Management Relations, Edmund Heery6. Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion from the Labour-Management Perspective, Fang Lee Cooke7. Union Research: Classic Frameworks, Evolving Practices, and New Trajectories, Adrienne E. Eaton and Justin Vinton8. Managing with I-O to Avoid Unions: Complicity, Naiveté or Indifference? Time for Introspection, Daphne Taras9. Major External Shocks to Labour-Management Relationships, Michelle O'Sullivan and Lorraine Ryan10. Online Platform Work, Yao Yao11. The Climate Crisis and the Future of Work, John Peters and Gregor Murray