This Handbook presents a theory of Business Interest Associations and fifteen empirical country by country case studies in the EU. The book is organized into three main parts. Part I develops a theory of business associations which centres on firm size as the key explanatory variable. Part II consists of country studies covering the EU-15, which are written along strictly comparable lines of analysis. Part III contains the cross-nationally comparative analysis. The book will make essential reading for researchers working in organization studies, industrial relations, industrial sociology and political science, as well as practioners in related fields.

This handbook is an indispensable teaching, research and reference guide for anyone interested in issues of labour and employment. The editors have assembled a top-flight group of authors and the end-product is an encompassing state-of-the-art review of the industrial relations field′ - Professor Bruce E Kaufman, AYSPS, Georgia State University ′This Handbook will quickly become the standard reference in industrial relations research. It provides the most comprehensive and challenging presentation of the key theoretical debates and topics of research that will shape our field well into the 21st century. All who wish to contribute to this field will need to read this volume and then build on what these authors have to say′ - Professor Thomas A. Kochan, MIT Institute for Work and Employment Research ′This authoritative panorama of the field demonstrates the contemporary vitality, breadth and critical depth of industrial relations scholarship and research. Thirty-four stimulating essays, by an international blend of leading academics, expertly review the analytical and empirical state of play across all aspects of industrial relations enquiry. In doing so, a rich agenda for further scholarly endeavour emerges′ - Paul Marginson, University of Warwick Over the last two decades, a number of factors have converged to produce a major rethink about the field of Industrial Relations. Globalization, the decline of trade unions, the spread of high performance work systems and the emergence of a more feminized, flexible work-force have opened new avenues of inquiry. The SAGE Handbook of Industrial Relations charts these changes and analyzes them. It provides a systematic, comprehensive survey of the field. The book is organized into four interrelated sections: " Theorizing Industrial Relations " The changing institutions that shape employment practice " The processes used by governments, employers and unions " Income inequality, employee wellbeing, business performance and national comparative advantages The result is a work of unprecedented scope and unparalleled ambition. It offers a compete guide to the central debates, new developments and emerging themes in the field. It will quickly be recognized as the indispensable reference for Teachers, Students and Researchers. It is relevant to economists, lawyers, sociologists, business and management researchers and Industrial Relations specialists.

A book on the path dependent and path creating structures and attitudes of business interest associations in a world of Europeanization and internationalization of markets. It includes empirical data on relational information used for network analytic purposes – drawn from hundreds of interviews with CEOs.

This insightful book examines the role of micro-politics in the life of global industry associations. Karsten Ronit addresses the various rules and norms required to administer these associations, highlighting the importance of managing variations in complex member demands and responding to expectations in their institutional environment.

Chambers of commerce are omnipresent in domestic public policy and play a crucial role in business self-governance. However, they are rather neglected in both public and scientific debates and seem to be in decline. This volume fills this gap in research on organised business and state-market coordination in Europe. The contributions discuss chambers of commerce as interest groups and actors in political systems, and address the institutional changes that this kind of self-governance is undergoing. The development of chambers of commerce in recent decades shows a wide array of mechanisms for institutional adaptation, ranging from displacement and conversion to enduring stability. This volume gives an insight into the dynamics and factors affecting these changes, with case studies on Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Spain, and the United Kingdom, all conducted by recognised experts in this field.

Private Interest Governments were identified in the 1980s as a special form of public regulation in selected economic sectors, rivalling conventional market, state, or community-based forms of public order. This book examines how these institutional arrangements have changed since their identification. It takes into account external changes such as Europeanization, globalization, liberalization, and sector-specific developments, which have had an impact on even long-established public policies. Breakdown and Change of Private Interest Governments presents new empirical insights in changes which led to the disappearance of a prime example of neo-corporatism, a traditional form of political and economic regulation, recurring to original data for interest associations in the dairy sector of four countries, Austria, Britain, Germany and Switzerland. It discusses the empirical results and the similarities and differences between the countries with regard to external processes which were studied with a different focus in the past. Utilising a comparative country case approach and the dairy industry as a specific sector case study, Breakdown and Change of Private Interest Governments will be of interest to students and scholars of Globalization and Political Economy.

In this innovative Handbook, Arco Timmermans brings together a diverse range of experts to scrutinise the current field of public affairs, what can be learned from it and its compatibility with democracy and open society. Through this multidisciplinary focus on knowledge and competencies, the Handbook aims to closely connect the spheres of research and practice within public affairs.

The Political Construction of Business Interests recounts employers' struggles to define their collective social identities at turning points in capitalist development.

ÔThis is an enlightening text on the subject of employment and work relations that will be useful for students in economics, specifically those studying labor relations.Õ Ð Lucy Heckman, American Reference Books Annual 2012 The broad field of employment relations is diverse and complex and is under constant development and reinvention. This Research Handbook discusses fundamental theories and approaches to work and employment relations, and their connection to broader political and societal changes occurring throughout the world. It provides comprehensive coverage of work and employment relations theory and practice. This up-to-date research compendium has drawn together a range of international authors from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. There are chapters from labour historians, theoreticians, more mainstream industrial relations scholars, sociologists, organizational psychologists, geographers, policy advisors, economists and lawyers. At the heart of each chapter is the notion that the world of work and employment relations has changed substantially since the halcyon days of IR, throughout the Dunlop Era of the 1950s. However, many areas of enquiry remain, and more questions have developed with society and technology. This Handbook reflects this view. As the field of study and practice continues to evolve throughout the twenty-first century, what lessons have we learnt from the past and what can we expect in the future? Academics and postgraduate students researching industrial relations, human resource management, employment relations, industrial sociology and sociology of work will find this important resource invaluable.

Political scientists have always accorded interest organizations a prominent place in European Union (EU) policy-making because they connect the EU institutions to citizens, provide important information to EU policy-makers, and control resources that impact on the problem-solving capacity of EU policies. In other words, they are vital to both the input legitimacy and the output legitimacy of the EU. So far, research on interest organizations in EU policy-making has concentrated on EU-level interest organizations and EU-level politics. This edited book draws attention to the role national interest organizations play in the EU multilevel system. All contributions present state-of-the-art research on that subject in the form of theory-driven empirical analyses. Chapters 8 and 9 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.