Examining how finance and governance influence employment relationships, work organization and industrial relations by means of a comparative analysis of Anglo-American, European and Japanes economies, this book is about the relationship between corporate governance regimes and labour management.

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 Japanese economies. 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 of countries, 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, and Spain, 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 corporate governance 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 the complexities of corporate governance systems and refines the distinction between market/outsider and relational/insider systems.

Debates regarding corporate governance have become increasingly important in Japan as the post-war model of bank-based, stakeholder-oriented corporate governance faces the new pressures associated with globalization and growing investor demands for shareholder value. Bringing together a group of leading scholars from economics, law, sociology and management studies, this book looks at how the Japanese approach to corporate governance and the firm have changed in the post-bubble era. The contributions offer a unique empirical exploration of why and how Japanese firms are reshaping their corporate governance arrangements, leading to greater diversity among firms and new 'hybrid' forms of corporate governance. The book concludes by looking at what effect these incremental but transformative changes may have on Japan's distinctive variety of capitalism.

This book examines how businesses manage their labour systems, and particularly how they manage the complex interaction of factors which give rise to instances of 'partnership' style relations between businesses and their employees. The book draws from the literature concerning 'Varieties of Capitalism' (VoC) and the different institutional and regulatory designs inherent in different types of political economy. The book is informed by a new and extensive set of empirical data from Australia that examines the activities of national and multinational business corporations, their outlooks and relationships with stakeholders, and relates these to new and evolving theoretical frameworks based in political economy and law. The book places the Australian regulatory model within this international debate, and assesses the extent to which the system does or does not fit into the general categorisation created in the VoC literature.

For decades, Europe has sought to become more financially integrated with the United States and thus European legal institutions, regulatory, governance and accounting practices have faced pressures to adapt to international competitive markets. Against this backdrop, European corporate governance systems have been criticized as being less efficient than the Anglo-American market based systems. This textbook examines the unique dimensions and qualities of European corporate governance. Reforms of key institutions, the doctrine of shareholder value and the seemingly irresistible growth of CEO power and reward are critically analyzed. The book brings out the richness of European corporate governance systems, as well as highlighting historical weaknesses that will require further work for a sustainable corporate governance environment in the future. In light of the most severe financial crisis since the 1930s, this intelligent look at European corporate governance is a vital textbook for courses on corporate governance and a great supplementary textbook on a host of business, management and accounting classes.

Corporate governance remains a central area of concern to business and society, and this Handbook constitutes the definitive source of academic research on this topic, synthesizing international studies from economics, strategy, international business, organizational behavior, entrepreneurship, business ethics, accounting, finance, and law.

The rights of the employee and the themes of employee ownership and participation have been central, recurring themes as the body of Catholic Social Thought has developed. There is now a unified corpus of official Catholic teaching that focuses the resources of moral theology and natural law theory on the important social issues of the day such as this. The description and explanation of the essential elements of Catholic Social Thought and its relationship to these themes helps the reader think about the place of the corporation in the economy and whether British and European corporate governance and labour law do what they should to put the employee at the centre of corporate governance.

We live in a 'corporate world' in which powerful business corporations shape and influence the activities of nation states, their national economies and their social relations. But what is it that moulds the activities of the corporations themselves? Do some societies have 'styles' of regulation that enable corporations to operate freely in the pursuit of certain interests, where others are more constrained? And, if so, are Australian companies more inclined to pursue the financial interests of shareholders and owners at the expense of employees and creditors? Corporate governance may be guided in the pursuit of particular interests by many influences, including law, politics, capital and labour and other pressure groups. How these competing pressures balance out varies enormously from state to state. Bringing together the original research by lawyers, political economists and industrial relations scholars, Varieties of Capitalism, Corporate Governance and Employees is a first Australian contribution to these complex issues.

Currently, there exists a distrust of corporate activity in the continuing aftermath of the financial crisis and with increasing recognition of the threats of climate change and global, as well as national, inequalities. Despite efforts in the arena of corporate governance to address these, we are still beset with corporate scandals and witness companies facing large fines for their environmental and cost-cutting misdemeanours. Recognising that the usual responses to dealing with these corporate problems are not effective, this book asks whether the traditional form of the joint stock corporation itself lies at the heart of these problems. What are the features of the corporate form and how does its current regulation underscore these problems? Identifying such features provides a basis for the discussion to develop towards suggesting more progressive regulatory developments around the corporate form. More fundamentally, this book investigates a diverse range of corporate governance models that are emerging as alternatives to the shareholder corporation, including employee-owned, cooperative and social enterprises. The contributors are leading scholars from various backgrounds including law, management and organisation studies, finance and accounting, as well as experienced professionals and policy makers with expertise in social and cooperative business models and the role of employees in the corporation.