International differences in employment relations What are.pdfVIP

International differences in employment relations: What are the relative merits of explanations in terms of strategic choice or political economy? Roderick Martin and Greg Bamber* University of Southampton, Griffi th University* We dedicate this paper to the memory of our friend and colleague, the late Vic Taylor formerly of the Australian Graduate School of Management, University of New South Wales. We are so sorry that we will no longer be able to discuss this paper with him. ABSTRACT In comparative employment relations (ER), there are contrasting arguments that there are: 1. international pressures leading to convergence and 2. national pressures leading to divergence. This paper aims to evaluate the relative merits of the ‘strategic choice’ and ‘political economy’ approaches in explaining national differences in ER arrangements. We identify four ‘touchstones’ of differentiation between ER systems: the government’s role, the degree of enterprise management autonomy, the character of unionism, and the role of collective bargaining. We locate seven national ER systems in terms of the four touchstones. We argue that a political economy approach has more potential than a strategic-choice approach as a framework for comparing ER systems internationally, especially if our focus extends to a wider range of countries than the usual developed market economies (DMEs), for example, to include also developing economies of Asia and of central Europe. Introduction In their comparative study of ER in telecommunications and car manufacturing, Katz and Darbishire (2000) identify ‘converging divergences’ whereby ER systems are converging on nationally similar systems albeit with high levels of internal differentiation. Their analysis echoes many other discussions of convergence, in which the requirements of modernisation (Kerr et alet alet al., 1962), or of., 1962), or of late development (Dore 1973), or late development