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Regarding human resource and labour relations management, academia focuses mainly on cities; however, rural areas are an integral part of China's economic structure. This study focuses on the movie projection industry in China's rural areas and explores how human resource practices (HRPs) are transformed and the labour process is reconstructed in digital transformation.

We adopt a case study of a rural movie projection company. The company's HRPs reconstructed the labour process of movie projection, and they have been promoted as national standards. Data were collected from in-depth interviews, files and observations.

Rural movie projection companies combine high-performance and paternalistic HRPs in the media industry's digital transformation. HRPs and digital technology jointly reconstruct the labour process. First, the HRPs direct labour process practices towards standardisation. Second, the digital supervision platform guides the control style from simple to technical, placing projectionists under pressure while increasing management efficiency. Third, rural movies made using digital technology have disenchanted rural residents. Accordingly, the conventional relationships between the “country and its citizens,” “individuals themselves,” and “models and individuals” have been removed, and a new relationship between “individuals themselves” is formed thanks to the novel HRPs.

This research plays a crucial role in exposing researchers to the labour process of rural movie projection, which is significant in China but often ignored by Western academia and advances the Chinese contextualisation of research on labour relations.

This study aims to analyze the effect the liberalization of industrial relations in Germany has had on trade unions’ influence on companies’ decisions. Particular attention is given to European measures of flexibilizing company law and how they affect industrial relations in Germany.

After presenting a theoretical basis regarding industrial relations and corporate governance, the paper then demonstrates, via a case study, the effects of the flexible European company law. It examines the strategic avoidance of trade union activity at SAP, a case that ended up before the European Court of Justice.

The flexibility of European company law allows companies to limit the influence of trade unions on company decisions. Limiting trade unions' internal participation weakens their position overall. Precautionary measures to protect employees’ rights help to reduce the dangers of this process.

The influence of European law brings a new perspective to the transformation of the German industrial relations model. The analysis of the strategy of using the legal type of the European company (Societas Europaea) to limit the internal activity of trade unions demonstrates the connection between institutional settings and corporate governance.

Small business owners require objective solutions to deal with threats of labour unionisation. This study aims to centre on a novel exploration for improving the leadership acumen of small business owners to address labour unionisation. Specifically, small business owners need a theoretical framework that uses best practices from human resource management (HRM) and industrial relations to provide solutions.

The design, methodology and approach reflect post-modernist epistemological and ontological perspectives for conducting systematic literature reviews. A systematic literature review revealed the relationship between small business owners’ leadership, positive industrial relations and HRM policies and procedures. To identify relevant studies in the review, the utilisation of several databases (EBSCO Database, including PsycINFO and Psych studies; Web of Science) and a mix of ranked journals from entrepreneurship, human resources, leadership and organisational behaviour.

The findings and results in this paper reflect the purpose, methodology and literature analysis culminating in 162,132,000 peer-reviewed studies. A total of 142 peer-reviewed studies met criterion for review. For example, the purpose of this review focused on labour unionisation mitigation for small businesses and HRM solutions. In doing so, the methodology allowed for identification of a novel research topic (i.e. how small business owners mitigate labour unionisation) worthy of further investigation. The sparse findings on labour unionisation mitigation represent small business owners' reticence in creating HRM policies and procedures.

This study contributes research implications for theory and practice by offering small business owners a theoretical framework to address labour unionisation. The framework, centring on HRM solutions, is grounded in social exchange theory to address the novel topic of labour unionisation mitigation in small businesses. This study results suggest that HRM solutions for small business owners provide competitive advantages for employee job satisfaction through a holistic industrial relations approach. In future research, examining other issues discussed in this study can influence the understanding of the relationship between small business owners and industrial relations to increase employee job satisfaction.

The role of labor unions in relation to corporate social responsibility (CSR) remains both ambiguous and crucial for union members and business leaders. Given the complex relationship between labor unions and corporations, this study aims to address whether labor unions keep corporations honest (by monitoring CSR activities) or potentially render CSR initiatives less necessary.

Using data from the MSCI Kinder, Lydenberg, Domini Database for firms in the Russell 1000 Index, this study examines the link between labor unions and CSR in U.S. companies over a six year period. Generalized least squares models were used to test the hypotheses for 3,937 firm-year observations.

The findings show that unionized companies generally pay less attention to CSR compared to nonunionized ones. The presence of labor unions and positive union-management relations both show a significant negative impact on CSR ratings, where positive union-management relations negatively affect CSR ratings more than just the presence of labor unions. Further, when considering the environmental, social and governance aspects of CSR separately, the results are more complex, suggesting that the relationship between labor unions and CSR varies depending on specific ESG dimensions.

CSR, a well-researched area, rarely addresses the companies' relationships with labor unions. Studies in South Korea and the UK have touched on the impact of labor unions on CSR, but in the USA it remains unexplored. This study extends this line of work by examining U.S. companies.

Although women have advanced in the economic sphere, the gender pay gap (GPG) remains a persisting problem for gender equality. Using Acker's theory of gendered organisations, this study strives to gain a better understanding from a macro and micro approach, how family and work-related policies, especially family-friendly measures (FFMs), and their uptake, contribute and maintain the GPG in Malta and specifically within the Financial and Insurance sector.

Two research instruments were used. National policy documents were analysed through the gender lens, followed by structured interviews with HR managerial participants within this sector.

Findings suggest that at a macro level, family and work-related policies could be divided into two broad categories: A set of family-friendly policies that contribute to the GPG because of their gendered nature, or because the uptake is mostly taken by women. These include make-work pay policies, which initially appear to be gender neutral, but which attracted lower educated inactive women to the Maltese labour market at low pay, contributing to an increase in the GPG. Second, a set of policies that take on a gender-neutral approach and help reduce the GPG. These include policies like the free childcare and after school care scheme that allow mothers to have a better adherence to the labour market. At the micro level within organisations, pay discrepancies between women and men were largely negated and awareness about the issue was low. Here, “ideal worker” values based on masculine norms seemed to lead to covert biases towards mothers who shoulder heavier care responsibilities in the families and make a bigger use of FFMs. Because men are better able to conform to these gendered values and norms, the GPG persists through vertical segregation and glass ceilings, among others.

Since not all the companies in the Eurostat NACE code list participated in this research, results could not be generalised but were indicative to future large-scale studies..

At the macro and policy level, some FFMs take on a clear gendered approach. For example, the disparity in length between maternity (18 weeks) and paternity leave (1 day) reinforces gender roles and stereotypes, which contribute to the GPG in the long run. While some FFMs like parental leave, career breaks, urgent family leave, telework, flexible and reduced hours seem to take on a more gender-neutral approach, the uptake of FFMs (except childcare) seems to generate discriminatory behaviour that may affect the GPG. When considering the make-work pay policies such as the “in-work benefit” and the “tapering of benefits”, this study showed that these policies attracted lower educated and low-skilled women into the labour market, which in turn may have further contributed to the increasing GPGs. On the other hand, the childcare and after school policies relieve working mothers from caregiving duties, minimising career interruptions, discriminatory behaviour and overall GPGs.

This study confirmed that organisations within the Financial and Insurance sector are gendered and give value to full-time commitment and long working hours, especially in managerial roles. Managerial positions remain associated with men because mothers tend to make more use of FFMs such as parental leave, reduced, flexible hours and teleworking. Mothers are indirectly penalised for doing so, because in gendered organisations, the uptake of FFMs conflict with the demands of work and ideal worker values (Acker, 1990). This maintains the vertical segregation and widens the GPG within the Financial and Insurance sector.

By using the gender lens and taking a wider and more holistic approach from the macro and micro level, this study highlights how interlinking factors lead to and sustain the GPG in the Financial and Insurance sector in Malta.

While the main emotional labor strategies are well-documented, the manner in which professionals navigate emotional rules within the workplace and effectively perform emotional labor is less understood. With this contribution, I aim to unveil “the good, the bad and the ugly” of emotional labor as a dynamic theatrical performance.

Focusing on three geriatric long-term care units within a French public hospital, this qualitative study relies on two sets of data (observation and interviews). Deeply rooted within the field of study, the chosen methodological approach substantializes the subtle hues of the emotional experience at work and targets resonance rather than generalization.

Using the theatrical metaphor, this research underlines the role of space in the practice of emotional labor in a unique way. It identifies the main emotionalized zones or emotional regions (front, back, transitional, mixed) and details their characteristics, before unearthing the nonlinearity and polyphonic quality of emotional labor performance and the versatility needed to that effect. Indeed, this research shows how health-care professionals juggle with the specificities of each region, as well as how space generates both constraints and resources. By combining static and dynamic prisms, diverse instantiations of hybridity and spatial in-betweens, anchored in liminality and trajectories, are revealed.

This research adds to the current body of literature on the concept of emotional labor by shedding light on its highly dynamic and interactional nature, revealing different levels of porosity between emotional regions and how the characteristics of each type of area can taint others and increase/decrease the occupational health costs of emotional labor. The study also raises questions about the interplay of emotional labor performance with the level of humanization/dehumanization of elderly people. Given the global demographics about an aging population, this gives food for thought at a social level.

This paper presents an historical reconstruction of the radicalisation of Alan Fox, the industrial sociologist and a detailed analysis of his early historical and sociological writing in the classical pluralist phase.

An intellectual history, including detailed discussion of key Fox texts, supported by interviews with Fox and other Biographical sources.

Fox’s radicalisation was incomplete, as he carried over from his industrial relations (IR) pluralist mentors, Allan Flanders and Hugh Clegg, a suspicion of political Marxism, a sense of historical contingency and an awareness of the fragmented nature of industrial conflict.

Recent academic attention has centred on Fox’s later radical pluralism with its “structural” approach to the employment relationship. This paper revisits his early, neglected classical pluralist writing. It also illuminates his transition from institutional IR to a broader sociology of work, influenced by AH Halsey, John Goldthorpe and others and the complex nature of his radicalisation.

After summarizing what has been learned so far, the purpose of this review is to suggest several promising avenues for future research on work-to-family enrichment (WFE) and family-to-work enrichment (FWE).

This is a literature review. After reviewing the existing research and searching for gaps in the literature, new areas of research will be proposed to fill these gaps.

While much has been learned about the antecedents and consequences of work–family enrichment in both directions, WFE and FWE, much remains to be learned.

Three important outcomes – job performance, organizational citizenship behavior, and counterproductive work behavior – need to be studied regarding WFE and FWE. Although supervisor support has been studied, the field needs to incorporate leadership theories and models to understand this phenomenon. Additional predictors of work outcomes – including emotional intelligence, leadership, emotional labor, social support, gender, and cross-cultural variables – need to be examined. Experience sampling methods and advanced research methodologies should also be used.

Although prior research has demonstrated the important effects of WFE and FWE, the practical effects on organizations in terms of job performance still need to be investigated.

The literature review conclusively demonstrates that WFE and FWE are both related to job satisfaction and family satisfaction.

This is the first review to summarize the existing meta-analytical research in this area and to propose the particular avenues of research advocated in this article.

Corporate site visits increase labor investment efficiency.

Our empirical model for the baseline analysis follows those of Jung et al. (2014) and Ghaly et al. (2020).

We show that corporate site visits are associated with significantly higher labor investment efficiency; more specifically, site visits reduce both over-hiring and under-hiring of employees. The effect of site visits on labor investment efficiency is more pronounced for firms with higher labor adjustment costs, greater financial constraints, weaker corporate governance and lower financial reporting quality. We also find that site visits mitigate labor cost stickiness.

First, while the literature has suggested how the presence of institutional investors and analysts may affect labor investment decisions, we focus on institutional investors and analysts’ activities and interactions with firm executives. We provide direct evidence that institutional investors and analysts may use corporate site visits to improve labor investment efficiency. Second, our study adds to a line of recent studies on how corporate site visits reduce information asymmetry and agency conflicts. We show that corporate site visits allow institutional investors and analysts to influence labor investment efficiency. We also provide new evidence that corporate site visits reduce labor cost stickiness.

The changing roles of the United Nations (UN) and national institutions have made addressing climate change a critical concern for many multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) survival and growth. This chapter discusses how such institutions, which vary in their nature and characteristics, shape firm strategies for climate change adaptation. Exploring different versions of institutional theory, the chapter demonstrates how and why institutional characteristics affect typical patterns of firm ownership, governance, and capabilities. These, in turn, influence companies’ internationalisation and climate-change strategies. Climate change poses challenges to how we understand firms’ strategic decisions from both an international business (IB) (HQ–subsidiary relations) and global value chains (GVC) (buyer–supplier relations) perspective. However, climate change also provides opportunities for companies to gain competitive advantages – if firms can reconfigure and adapt faster than their competitors. Existing IB and GVC research tends to downplay the importance of climate change strategies and the ways in which coherent or dysfunctional institutions affect firms’ reconfiguration and adaptation strategies in a globally dispersed network of value creation. This chapter presents a perspective on the institutional conditions that affect firms’ climate change strategies regarding ownership, location, and internalisation (OLI), and GVCs, with ‘investment’ and ‘emerging standards’ playing a significant role. The authors illustrate the discussion using several examples from the Global South (i.e. Bangladesh) and the Global North (i.e. Denmark, Sweden, and Germany) with a special emphasis on the garment industry. The aim is to encourage future research to examine how a ‘business systems’, or varieties of capitalism, institutional perspective can complement the analysis of sustainability and climate change strategies in IB and GVC studies.