Abstract
Reviewed by: Niall Cullinane, The Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland
A real challenge of teaching contemporary employment relations is grappling with the often national orientations of textbooks in a context where students are increasingly international in profile. Even with the burgeoning number of international texts, the dominant trend is to provide standalone descriptions of employment relations in different national settings – the comparative element acting, understandably, as book-ends. In this context, David Farnham’s The Changing Faces of Employment Relations: Global, Comparative and Theoretical Perspectives is welcome as a real contribution to the teaching of employment relations from an international and comparative perspective. Based on an immense canon of monographs, articles and data sets, the author describes, compares and synthesises theories, concepts and empirical trends regarding the intellectual traditions, actors, processes and outcomes of international employment relations.
To scholars, much of the material will be familiar and, as such, the novelty of the book lies more in presentation than in content. Moving beyond the introductions of Chapter 1, the first section sets out ‘Employment Relations as a Field of Study’. Chapter 2 acknowledges many of the major intellectual and historical traditions shaping the terrain. Chapter 3 tackles context, framing the analysis with recourse to capital and product markets, technology, social customs and the like. Chapter 4 interrogates the ‘Theories, Ideas and Research in Employment Relations’. Though an interesting chapter, scholars may quibble that recent influential theories are absent from explicit consideration. Thus, the ‘historical institutionalist’ tradition is not really singled out for specific attention nor the regulationist approach deployed with most impressive force in Chris Howell’s important monograph on the state and trade unionism (to be fair to the author, however, these texts are referenced in the bibliography). Their absence is all the more dissatisfying when one finds their place occupied by accounts of now fairly passé ideas around corporate culture and ‘Japanese management theory’. Nonetheless, the section is well served by its analytical, as well as historical, remit and an excellent introduction to the field.
The second section of the book covers ‘The Main Players’. Chapter 5 considers managers and the management function. This is, for the most part, a chapter summarising the main currents in Anglo-Saxon human resource management (HRM) with later theoretical incursions into International HRM (IHRM). Considering the latter, the focus is orientated towards the conceptualisation of behaviours within the IHRM mould, and one suspects these pages may have been usefully complemented by recourse to empirical studies on TNC behaviour, as found in, say, research on institutional avoidance or the deployment of coercive comparisons across plants. Chapter 6 addresses workers, employee voice and trade unions. Chapter 7 considers the state and global agencies like the International Labour Organization. Interestingly, this is the chapter where pressures for convergence appear most pronounced and there is discussion of how public sector work becomes increasingly colonised by private sector practices, the withdrawal of state involvement from the economy, the marketisation of goods and services, and the increasing role of equity markets.
The third section of the book turns to ‘Processes and Outcomes’. In Chapter 8, on Legal Regulation, there is an examination of different legal systems and freedoms of association internationally. Surprisingly absent from consideration, given their importance, are the harmonising potentials, whether negative or positive, of European Union regulations. Chapter 9 considers employer regulation, whilst Chapter 10 visits the arena of worker resistance where the various strands in the literature on resistance and misbehaviour are integrated. Here Kelly’s application of mobilisation theory might have been included, given its centrality to much employment relations thinking in recent decades. Chapter 11 offers an account of collective bargaining, worker participation and conflict mediation. The relevant institutional arrangements are well covered and much of the material in this section is, understandably, Euro-centric.
The central observations of the book are revisited in Part 4, Chapter 12: ‘Employment Relations in a Global Age.’ As the author comments, divergence and variation appear to remain the watchwords of international trends. True, some convergence is apparent across countries, but the author counsels that it should be seen as ‘… heterogeneous pathways, with some elements pushing simultaneously in the same and the opposite direction’ (p. 542). This chapter condenses a considerable range of matters into its pages and the variation in material is challenging to digest when read in one sitting. This desire to be broad, as the author himself acknowledges early on (p. 13), comes at the expense of depth. Thus, the deployment of Colin Crouch’s argument on the post-democratic condition of contemporary Western democracies is followed by, and never reconciled with, the Economist’s Intelligence Unit ‘Democracy Index’ placing North America at the top.
None of the shortcomings identified here take away from what is overall a very solid contribution to the textbook field. Undoubtedly with a book of this size and scope, one can easily pick out areas not covered and challenge the inclusion of others. At well over 600 pages, the book is perhaps already a little too long. Some chapters may well be ripe for editing and curtailment in later editions. Nevertheless, The Changing Face of Employment Relations could easily serve as the main textbook for relevant postgraduate courses or as support reading in undergraduate courses. Finally, note might be made of the fantastic bibliography at the end, which is a joy to explore: a treasure trove of old classics – some of which may have been long forgotten, such as Hudson’s Working to Rule – sit alongside more contemporaneous work, not just in employment relations and HRM, but also in economics and political science. This is clearly a product of the author’s long-standing knowledge and contribution to employment relations teaching and research. Overall, a very fine text.