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Industrial relations, organizational behavior, and human resource management scholars have studied numerous aspects of internal workplace conflict resolution, ranging from the design of conflict resolution systems to the processes used for resolving conflicts to the outcomes of the systems. Scholars from these specialties, however, have paid considerably less attention to external workplace conflict resolution through litigation. This chapter analyzes certain areas of such litigation, focusing specifically on workplace conflicts involving issues of managerial and employee misclassification, independent contractor versus employee status, no-poaching agreements, and executive compensation.

Leading recent cases involving these issues are examined, with particular attention given to the question of whether the conflicts reflected therein could have been resolved internally or through alternative dispute resolution (ADR) methods rather than through litigation.

Implications of this analysis are drawn for workplace conflict resolution theory and practice. In doing so, I conclude that misclassification disputes could likely be resolved internally or through ADR rather than through litigation, but that no-poaching and executive compensation disputes could very likely not be resolved internally or through ADR.

The chapter draws on and offers an integrated analysis of particular types of workplace conflict that are typically treated separately by scholars and practitioners. These include misclassification conflicts, no poaching and labor market competition conflicts, and executive compensation conflicts. The originality and value of this chapter are to show that despite their different contexts and particular issues, the attempted resolution through litigation of these types of workplace conflicts has certain common, systematic characteristics.

This research investigates and finds support for the hypothesis that the demand for human resource managers is largely derived from the relative demand for professional, managerial, and technical employees with high levels of occupationally specific human capital. Strong demand for these employees significantly increases both employment and earnings of human resource managers, reflecting the growing importance of occupational specific capital to firm performance and the practice of human resources. Using data from the Occupational Employment Statistics and the Current Population Survey March Supplement the research analysis finds that the employment of approximately 11% of the labor force is strongly associated with greater employment and higher compensation of human resource managers, and the employment of another 9% of the labor force is more weakly associated with the employment of human resource management (HRM). However, the employment of approximately 40% of the labor force is associated with the relative decrease in employment and compensation of HRM.

This chapter synthesizes two complementary streams in the economic thought of David M. Gordon, and explores their shared relevance to the rise of the “gig” economy in modern economies. Gordon made lasting contributions to the radical political-economic analysis of work and employment. At the microeconomic level of individual workplaces, he and his collaborators originally explained the factors affecting employers’ labor extraction strategies, through which they seek maximum work effort from waged employees while minimizing unit labor costs. At the macroeconomic or structural level, he linked that conflictual process to the broader institutional and structural features of the overall accumulation regime which is essential to any successful incarnation of capitalism. Employment practices and social structures have evolved considerably since Gordon’s passing, but his insights are still useful in understanding the rise of, and limits to, modern work arrangements. In particular, Gordon’s dual portrayal of the parameters of labor extraction, and their positioning within a broader structural and institutional context, provides a convincing explanation of both the recent rise of gig economy practices, and their potential limits.

This chapter analyzes the extent to which more experienced employers, arbitrators, and attorneys fare better in securities industry arbitration. Although studies into experience have identified a so-called repeat-player effect on outcomes, I argue that more nuanced considerations of experience are required.

I empirically analyze all employment arbitration awards from the securities system’s inception through 2008. I separate experience into two categories (between- and within-group effects) and run hybrid random- and fixed-effects regressions modeling increasing employer, attorney, and arbitrator experience on arbitration outcomes.

I find that between-group experience affects awards but that within-group experience is nonsignificant, except in civil rights cases. This implies that so-called repeat players gain an advantage over inexperienced players due to their entity-specific characteristics, not necessarily by learning to use the system to their advantage. I conclude that, although the securities arbitration system suffers from power imbalances, there is little evidence of systemic exploitation by firms.

Prior studies into employment arbitration are limited both by their definitions of experience and by their methodological approaches. I overcome these issues by employing a novel methodological approach to measure between- and within-entity experience, which adds a more multifaceted and nuanced framework to the literature than the common repeat-player versus single-player dichotomy.

This chapter presents a theoretical framework of the industrial relations (IR) system in China’s coal mining industry, combining the roles of management organizations, workers, and trade unions, as well as government agencies. It is one of the first empirical attempts to investigate the relationship between human resource (HR) practices, labor relations, and occupational safety in China’s coal mining industry over the past 60 years, based on the secondary data on coal mining accidents and case studies of two state-owned coal mines in a northern city in Anhui Province, China. The fluctuating occupational safety has been affected by government regulations over different time spans, marked by key political agendas, and by coal mining firms taking concrete measures to respond to these regulations, while exhibiting differing safety performance in state-owned versus township-and-village-owned mines. The field studies compared a safety-oriented to a cost-control-oriented HR and labor relations system, and their influences on safety performance. Coal mining firms and practitioners are advised to shift the traditional personnel management paradigm to a modern HR management system. In addition, although workers are often blamed directly for accidents, it is suggested that workers’ participation and voice in various processes of decision-making and policy implementation, and trade unions’ active involvement in protecting workers from occupational hazards, be encouraged.

We take a state-stewardship view on corporate governance and executive compensation in economies with strong political involvement, where state-appointed managers act as responsible “stewards” rather than “agents” of the state.

We test this view on China and find that Chinese managers are remunerated not for maximizing equity value but for increasing the value of state-owned assets.

Managerial compensation depends on political connections and prestige, and on the firms’ contribution to political goals. These effects were attenuated since the market-oriented governance reform.

Economic reform without reforming the human resources policies at the executive level enables the autocratic state to exert political power on corporate decision making, so as to ensure that firms’ business activities fulfill the state’s political objectives.

As a powerful social elite, the state-steward managers in China have the same interests as the state (the government), namely extracting rents that should adhere to the nation (which stands for the society at large or the collective private citizens).

As China has been a communist country with a single ruling party for decades, the ideas of socialism still have a strong impact on how companies are run. The legitimacy of the elite’s privileged rights over private sectors is central to our question.

Chinese executive compensation stimulates not only the maximization of shareholder value but also the preservation of the state’s interests.

This paper builds homogenous series of the rate of surplus value (RSV) for the Chinese economy over the extended period 1956–2014 with a Marxian approach. It finds that the high profitability that stimulated capital accumulation in the decade before the 2008 crisis had relied on the continuous growth in the RSV. Given that the global crisis and changes in the domestic economy undermine all the conditions maintaining the accumulation model (an expanding external market, a relatively large reserve army of labor, and a low debt-income ratio), the RSV has failed to increase and profitability declined since 2008. Thus, this paper interprets the so-called new normal of the Chinese economy as a stage of declining profitability that results mainly from the stagnant RSV and the rising value composition of capital.

Wages have been spreading out across workers over time – or in other words, the 90th/50th wage ratio has risen over time. A key question is, has the productivity distribution also spread out across worker skill levels over time? Using our calculations of productivity by skill level for the United States, we show that the distributions of both wages and productivity have spread out over time, as the right tail lengthens for both. We add Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) countries, showing that the wage–productivity correlation exists, such that gains in aggregate productivity, or GDP per person, have resulted in higher wages for workers at the top and bottom of the wage distribution. However, across countries, those workers in the upper-income ranks have seen their wages rise the most over time. The most likely international factor explaining these wage increases is the skill-biased technological change of the digital revolution. The new artificial intelligence (AI) revolution that has just begun seems to be having similar skill-biased effects on wages. But this current AI, called “supervised learning,” is relatively similar to past technological change. The AI of the distant future will be “unsupervised learning,” and it could eventually have an effect on the jobs of the most highly skilled.

Despite the implementation of the “land for social security” scheme to compensate for land expropriation in rural China, the distribution of social security benefits varies widely both between and within provinces. Why do local officials offer pension compensation in addition to cash payments to some landless farmers and not to others? Using in-depth interviews and survey data, I find that certain attributes of collective demands may signal a threat to social stability, prompting government concessions in the form of welfare benefits. Particularly, among the dispossessed farmers who have engaged in petitions, those who petitioned to higher-level officials were found to be more likely to receive pension benefits than those who have participated in claim-making with a bigger crowd. I propose that in the administrative hierarchy system of cadre evaluation, local officials may perceive public visits and petitions to higher levels of government as more threatening to their career prospects. Moreover, the dilemma between compensation and stability maintenance may also enable local officials to condone strategic targeting rather than collective gathering.