The Importance of Comparative Workplace Employment Relations Studies

Comparative employment relations is a well-established field within industrial relations. At the macro level it has been important in identifying the role of institutions, culture and economic conditions in understanding differences and similarities in employment relations across countries. In particular, the works coming out of the varieties of capitalism literature (Hall and Soskice 2001) have highlighted the importance of historical legacies and path dependencies which substantially constrain (as well as explain) the structures and orientations of labour market actors and institutions. At the micro level, it has traditionally been dominated by case-study qualitative research which has sought to unpick differences in practices and perceptions of actors faced with seemingly similar working environments but in different national and local settings. Studies such as Nichols and Cam's (2005) investigation of the labour process in the white goods industry in seven different countries and four different continents have been seminal in shedding light on the extent of the heterogeneity within seemingly similar settings. Comparative studies offer opportunities to identify the role played by national and local factors in shaping practices and outcomes, such as attitudes to management, the climate of employment relations and workplace financial performance. The availability of comparative data also allows the analyst to test hypotheses about the nature of differences. Our special issue seeks to reflect some of this work, together with studies that build on two recent developments in the field. The first of these fairly recent developments is the use of large-scale surveys which, because they share a number of features — such as the unit of analysis, sampling and survey content — permit analysts to undertake comparative work based on large-scale quantitative data. Perhaps the most significant of these are the surveys of workplaces undertaken in Australia (Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Survey), Britain (the Workplace Employment Relations Survey [WERS]), France (Relations Professionnelles et Négociations d'Entreprises), Canada (Workplace and Employee Survey), Norway (the Norwegian Workplace Employment Relations Survey) and Germany (the German Institut fuer Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung [IAB] Panel). These are all large-scale surveys of workplaces which, because they are based on stratified random samples, are nationally representative of workplace populations when analysed with survey weights. Some of these surveys have been conducted on a number of occasions providing a picture of employment relations over time in those countries. The more recent surveys also collect data from employees so that one can investigate ways in which workplace practices impinge upon the experiences of employees within and across workplaces. Although each national survey is different — often in some quite fundamental ways — the similarities are sufficient to permit comparative analyses, provided analysts avoid potential pitfalls along the way. Comparative studies based on such surveys are increasingly common and now include comparisons between British WERS data and the German IAB data (e.g. Schnabel et al. 2006), France (Caroli and Van Reenen 2001), and Australia (Mumford and Smith 2003). The trend towards comparative studies of employment relations is likely to continue and will be bolstered by the advent of multi-country employment relations surveys which use a common methodology and survey instruments. Some of these, such as the European Foundation's European Survey on Working Time are workplace-based, but others are company-level (e.g. the Economic and Social Research Council-funded Employment Practices of Multinational Companies in Organizational Context)1 or are based on surveys of individuals (such as the European Foundation's European Working Conditions Surveys). Analyses of these surveys contribute not only to academic knowledge about the nature of employment relations but also to policy formation at the EU level. The second important recent development is the collection of quantitative comparative survey data for particular sectors or firms. This can be valuable because much of the heterogeneity in multi-sector or multi-firm surveys is screened out, often providing a clean ‘take’ on the comparative dimension of employment relations. Because analysts have designed the surveys for comparative analysis at the outset, they can avoid some of the difficulties encountered by those using dedicated national surveys. The growth in such studies is partly attributable to economic and social processes, such as the globalization of markets and firms, which means much of the employment relations ‘action’ is best seen in a comparative context and, sometimes, at a supranational level. It is also, perhaps, attributable to the declining cost of mounting such surveys, many of which are conducted by telephone or over the web. In spite of the growth in comparative workplace data, articles that compare and contrast findings across countries remain relatively rare. It was to reflect and to encourage more comparative workplace research that the BJIR held a conference on this topic in March 2007, the product of which is this collection of articles. These are a selection from more than 30 submissions to the journal, and we were heartened that the theme attracted such wide interest. The objective was to see what we can learn about work and the workplace that we might not have known by confining analyses to single countries. Underlying this endeavour was a concern to identify empirical regularities and varieties across countries and to consider the role of institutions and other country-specific features in understanding the nature of workplace employment relations. In doing so, the collection of articles draws on all three types of micro study referred to above, namely qualitative case studies, analysis of national workplace surveys, and the production and analysis of dedicated multi-country surveys. The first article by Batt et al. uses survey data for call centre establishments in eight countries to examine the relationship between wages and human resource practices. High-involvement work design and the use of performance-based pay are significantly positively related to wages, whereas intensive use of performance monitoring is negatively associated with wages. These relationships are larger among liberal economies compared to co-ordinated ones, but individual country differences are large and, in many cases, do not conform to expectations regarding institutional differences between liberal and co-ordinated market economies. Marsden and Belfield present data from large-scale national surveys in Britain and France to show that incentive pay for non-managers is more widespread in France than in Britain. Their explanation looks at the institutional constraints and facilitators in France such as the stronger employment protection in France, which provides an impulse to develop incentive pay; employer networking activities in France, which facilitate joint learning about its development and operation; and finally, government fiscal incentives for profit-sharing. Caroli et al. provide a qualitative case study of the French and the British food industry. They explore the interaction between competitive pressures and institutional and regulatory structures and their impact on workplace practices. Their findings indicate that, faced with a similar competitive environment, firms in both countries have sought to increase labour flexibility. However, the predominant forms of flexibility vary across the two countries, partly reflecting the characteristics of national labour market institutions. Numerical flexibility dominated in Britain, with high levels of paid overtime and temporary agency work, whereas French workplaces relied more on internal functional flexibility. Doellgast's article compares the work reorganization in US and German call centres. Her findings show that the German firms adopted high-involvement practices relying on broad skills and worker discretion, while the US cases relied on a narrow division of labour and tight discipline. These outcomes are explained by differences in institutional supports for collective voice: the German works councils used their stronger co-determination rights to encourage alternative, participatory approaches to work design. Símon uses employer–employee micro data from the European Structure of Earnings Survey for nine European countries to look at the origin of international differences in wage inequality. He shows that wage inequality is highly correlated with the magnitude of inter-firm wage differentials. Workplace- and job-related factors generally have a more significant impact on within-country wage inequality than individual characteristics. However, European countries differ significantly not only in the extent of wage inequality but also in the relative influence of factors shaping wage inequality. Whereas all articles so far have highlighted cross-country variations and explained them by national institutional differences, the final article by McCann et al. highlights cross-country similarities. Their case studies explore the impact of organizational restructuring on middle managers in large organizations in the USA, the UK and Japan. They find considerable similarities across the three countries in terms of the changing nature of work roles, career paths, working hours and spans of control of mid-level managers. Their data demonstrate that middle managers in all three countries face fundamental changes to key areas of their work experience. We thank John Forth for feedback on an earlier version of this article.

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