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Addresses the standardization of the measurements and the labels for concepts commonly used in the study of work organizations. As a reference handbook and research tool, seeks to improve measurement in the study of work organizations and to facilitate the teaching of introductory courses in this subject. Focuses solely on work organizations, that is, social systems in which members work for money. Defines measurement and distinguishes four levels: nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio. Selects specific measures on the basis of quality, diversity, simplicity and availability and evaluates each measure for its validity and reliability. Employs a set of 38 concepts ‐ ranging from “absenteeism” to “turnover” as the handbook’s frame of reference. Concludes by reviewing organizational measurement over the past 30 years and recommending future measurement reseach.

Rosemary Batt is the Alice Hanson Cook Professor of Women and Work at the ILR School, Cornell University. She is a Professor in Human Resource Studies and International and Comparative Labor and Editor of the ILR Review. She received her BA from Cornell University and her Ph.D. from MIT. Her research focuses on comparative international studies of management and employment relations, with particular attention to globalization and the restructuring of service industries, and its impact on low wageworkers. She coordinated the Global Call Center Research Project (http://www.globalcallcenter.org). Her current work focuses on the impact of financialization on management and employment relations. Her work has appeared in such journals as the AMJ, British Journal of Industrial Relations, the European Journal of Industrial Relations, ILR Review, Industrial Relations, IJHRM, and Personnel Psychology. She is coeditor of the Oxford Handbook on Work and Organization and coauthor of The New American Workplace, Cornell University Press (http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/directory/rb41/).

While the origin of Korean Industrial Relations goes back 150 years when the country opened its seaports to foreign countries, it didn’t emerge as a field of study until 1950s when academics began to write books and papers on the Korean labor movement, labor laws, and labor economics. In this paper, we sketch this history and describe important events and people that contributed to the development of industrial relations in Korea. Korean industrial relations in the early 20th century were significantly distorted by the 35-year-Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945). After regaining its independence, the U.S. backed, growth-oriented, military-based, authoritarian Korean government followed suit and consistently suppressed organized labor until 1987. Finally, the 1987 Great Labor Offensive allowed the labor movement to flourish in a democratized society. Three groups were especially influential in the field of industrial relations in the early 1960s: labor activists, religious leaders, and university faculty. Since then, numerous scholars have published books and papers on Korean industrial relations, whose perspectives, goals, and processes are still being debated and argued. The Korean Industrial Relations Association (KIRA) was formed on March 25, 1990 and many other academic and practitioner associations have also come into being since then. The future of industrial relations as a field of study in Korea does not seem bright, however. Issues regarding organized labor are losing attention because of a steadily shrinking unionization rate, changing societal attitude toward labor unions, and the enactment of new and improved laws and regulations regarding employment relationships more broadly. Thus, we suggest that emerging issues such as contingent workers, works councils and tripartite partnership, conflict management, and human rights will be addressed by the field of industrial relations in Korea only if this field breaks with its traditional focus on union and union–management relations.

This study provides a comprehensive framework of adaptation in triadic business relationship settings in the service sector. The framework is based on the industrial network approach (see, e.g., Axelsson & Easton, 1992; Håkansson & Snehota, 1995a). The study describes how adaptations initiate, how they progress, and what the outcomes of these adaptations are. Furthermore, the framework takes into account how adaptations spread in triadic relationship settings. The empirical context is corporate travel management, which is a chain of activities where an industrial enterprise, and its preferred travel agency and service supplier partners combine their resources. The scientific philosophy, on which the knowledge creation is based, is realist ontology. Epistemologically, the study relies on constructionist processes and interpretation. Case studies with in-depth interviews are the main source of data.

Presents five of the best papers from the human resource management and industrial relations track of the 2002 British Academy of Management Annual Conference, reflecting the diversity of the field. Concludes that employee relations in many western countries have undergone a significant transformation over the past two decades with a considerable disparity in the pay and conditions of the labour force and a growing gap between the “winners” and “losers”. States, however, that within the European Union, while the collective strength of the workforce may have decreased, a whole raft of European legislation has enhanced individual employment rights.

Companies inevitably interact and entrench in complex organic systems of business relationships with other. These business networks are not objectively defined, instead they are shaped by the subjective perception of actors. This inherent subjectivity is associated with the notion of network pictures, that is, a research tool that researchers or managers can use to grasp practitioner theories. In this chapter, we discuss how the importance of identifying these theories results mainly from underlying principles of sense-making theory, as well as from the idea around performativity. Drawing on these theoretical groundings, this chapter has two objectives: to explore how practitioners actually perceive their business surroundings and to assess the extent of overlapping between (IMP Group) academic theories and practitioner theories. To achieve these objectives, the researchers use a dimensional network pictures model previously developed in the literature to analyze the network pictures of 49 top-level managers across 17 companies from two very distinct contexts or networks: a product-based network and a project-based network. Among other practices, findings illustrate how practitioners tend to simplify what is going on in their complex surroundings, to personalize their relationships with those surroundings, and to think in a stereotyped way. Moreover, the juxtaposition between the captured practitioner theories and academic (IMP Group) theories show that these are not always overlapping, and are in some cases quite the opposite. This research contributes to the ongoing discussion of the importance of grasping actors’ views of the world, arguing that sense-making theory and the notion of performativity are the two main conceptual drivers justifying the urgency in making those views more visible. This research also adds to the research on the impact and suitability of IMP Group theories on managerial thinking and practice. Finally, this research reinforces the current call for further practice-based research in business network contexts.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of Employee Relations is split into seven sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Design of Work; Performance, Productivity and Motivation; Patterns of Work; Pay, Incentives and Pensions; Career/Manpower Planning ; Industrial Relations and Participation; Health and Safety.

Charmine E. J. Härtel is Professor of Organizational Behavior and Development in the Faculty of Business and Economics at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia and a Fellow of the Australia and New Zealand Academy of Management. Dr. Härtel has 27 years of experience in the public and private sector and is recognized internationally as a leading expert in the areas of organizational and employee development. Her research and consulting identifies new practices and development initiatives that facilitate organizational performance and promote social and organizational justice, employee and community well-being, positive cross-cultural relations, and social inclusion. Her pioneering work on the characteristics of positive work environments has identified a number of the drivers of unhealthy and toxic work environments along with the leadership and human resource management practices, organizational policies and strategies to turn such situations around. Prof. Härtel's work appears in books and over 70 refereed journal articles, including the Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, Leadership Quarterly, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Management, and Human Resource Management Review. She is recipient of numerous research grants and contracts including nine grants from the Australian Research Council. Prof. Härtel is coeditor of the annual book series Research on Emotion in Organizations and lead author of the textbook Human Resource Management: Transforming Theory into Innovative Practice. She is Associate Editor of Academy of Management Learning and Education and an Editorial Board member of a number of journals including Human Relations, International Journal of Work and Organisation, Equal Opportunities International, Journal of Managerial Psychology, and Journal of Management and Organization. She is also a member of the executive for the Gender and Diversity in Organizations Division of the Academy of Management. Dr. Härtel holds a Ph.D. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Colorado State University and was recognized with the Jacob E. Hautaluoma Distinguished Alumni Award for “improving organizations at the team, group, company and international levels, and a dedication towards helping individuals and organizations become more effective and well adjusted.”

The intention of this chapter is to evaluate the likelihood that the Critical Management Division (CMS) of the Academy of Management can accomplish anything beyond helping to promote the careers of its members.

This chapter examines the likelihood of getting anything done from a personalized historical approach, as the author was a witness to many of the events covered in the chapter. It also compares the experience of the CMS Division with that of critical management as an academic specialty in other nations.

After examining the evolution of the social role of the US-based Academy of Management along with the origins of the CMS Division, the author concludes that the division’s emergence was tolerated precisely because it was so unlikely to accomplish anything that might challenge the institutional privileges of academic management, let alone seriously threaten the hegemony of American-led global capitalism.

The chapter intends to discourage critical scholars from wasting their time and energy trying to make CMS into something it is not structurally capable of being, and instead focus on building organizations outside of the academy that might stand a chance of promoting the goals of critical management.

While several histories and critiques of UK-based critical management have been published, this chapter may be the first critical history of CMS.

Presents a conceptual framework that attempts to bridge the lag between strategic need and international human resource (IHR) support practices. Looks at the idea of competencies being an alternative to the traditional construct of jobs. Presents a model consisting of three balanced transnational competencies. Concludes with a series of HR applications of the model.