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The article explores the potential for self-employed personal trainers (SEPTs) to resist exploitation by gyms, with a focus on the attitudes of SEPTs towards trade unions and collective action.

This article is based on a multiple-method study with qualitative data drawn from participant observation and interviews and quantitative data from a questionnaire survey. The data were collected in 2018.

The potential for individual resistance to exploitation among SEPTs is limited. However, attitudes towards a collective response were largely positive, albeit there is certainly no consensus agreement on the value of trade unions. The logic of coopetition is applied to explain the issues on which trade unions might organize SEPTs.

The study suggests coopetition as an organizing logic for highly individualized self-employed workers in intense proximal competition with one another. However, the research presented in this article was undertaken with a unique group of solo self-employed workers. Further study is required to demonstrate the applicability of these findings.

The commercialization of work poses a threat to traditional employment and trade unions. It is crucial that trade unions represent the interests of all workers by focusing on workers who do not traditionally form the vanguard of its membership (e.g. dependent workers and the falsely self-employed). The study illustrates the way in which trade unions can organize micro-entrepreneurs.

Coopetitive representation whereby micro-entrepreneurs collaborate to resist exploitation while remaining independent has the potential to change the perspectives and values of entrepreneurs.

The article assesses the potential of organizing a highly individualized and competitive self-employed worker. Coopetitive representation is presented as distinct from other approaches to representation and as a means of trade union revitalization.

This paper aims to examine the cycle of labour protests in Sweden, comparing the contentious actions of trade unions in public and private sectors over 40 years. Prior studies have focused on industrial conflicts or labour protests, but a long-term perspective on the broad protest repertoire across sectors is lacking. The goal is to test the argument of diversification of action repertoire and differences between the public and private sectors.

The authors apply the grievance and political opportunity theories of social movement research for explaining the cycles of labour protests and differences between sectors in Sweden over 40 years (1980–2020). The unique protest event data are combined with the official strike statistics. The research period includes the globalisation of the economy and two economic crises.

Although unions in both sectors have decreased protest mobilisation over time, private sector unions have resigned the most, whereas public sector unions continue to mobilise a diverse set of protest actions. Swedish unions have not replaced strikes with other protest repertoires. The open opportunities have allowed them to use various protests as part of “routine” operations.

Protest event data are derived from newspapers, leading to an over-representation of large events in the urban areas. Future studies should combine data from newspapers with data about online protests.

By thoroughly examining all protest events mobilised by all trade unions in different sectors over 40 years (1980–2020), the paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the cycles of labour protest. The findings should interest industrial relations and social movement scholars.

The paper examines the approach of United Kingdom (UK) Trade Unions to the use of institutional power resources (IPR) in the second half of the twentieth century.

Using secondary material, it examines the unions' approach to IPR in three cases; collective bargaining; worker representation and trade union structure.

The paper concludes that unions did not appreciate the importance of, and lacked a strategic approach to, IPR. Although employer and government action were largely responsible for the decline of industrial relations institutions, the failure of the unions to engage with IPR contributed to this process. It explains the failure of the unions to engage with IPR by reference to their lack of strategic capabilities and skills in relation to power resources (PRs) in general and IPR in particular.

It would have been interesting to collect primary data via interviews with union actors from the period examined to test the interpretation of secondary data contained in the article.

The paper has identified the kind of strategic decision-making which is necessary for unions to engage effectively with IPR. It is has also indicated the key skills which unions need to develop to be able to manage their engagement with IPR.

The paper has implications for the role of trade unions in society, showing the need for them to develop narratives to convince society of the importance of their role and action and to develop the skills which enable them to connect with other social groups, e.g. intermediation, engagement with coalitional resources.

Analysis of the decline of industrial relations institutions in this period has emphasized the role of employers and the state. This paper contributes to a more balanced perspective on this decline by drawing attention to the lack of a union strategy towards IPR and the importance of the detail of the management and employment of power resources.

In the context of debates on the role of social partners in shaping anti-crisis policies, the article explores the developments of social dialogue in Poland following the outbreak of the pandemic. The central research question is whether the crisis has helped to revitalise social dialogue or has it further revealed its weaknesses that were apparent before it.

The paper is based on the combination of literature review and the analysis of primary data derived from 22 expert interviews with the representatives of trade unions, employers and ministries collected in 2020–2021 in four essential industries (education, health care, social care and logistics).

The analysis suggests that the pandemic led to reinforcement of “illusory corporatism” in Poland, deepened mistrust among social partners and triggered a shift to informal channels of influencing policymaking. The weakness of the social partners and the strong position of the right-wing populist government meant that fears of recession and a health crisis were insufficient to develop “crisis” corporatism. While business interests were represented better than labour in policymaking, limited labour-friendly outcomes have been achieved as a result of workers’ mobilisation and unilateral decisions of the government rather than tripartite social dialogue.

Based on original empirical research, the article contributes to the discussion on the impact of the crisis on social dialogue under patchwork capitalism. It points to the role of strong governments and informality in circumventing tripartite structures and the importance of essential workers’ mobilisation in response to the lack of social dialogue.

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on intersectionality and ascertain its potential for application to human resources (HR) research and practice. Particular attention is paid to its methodological issues involving how best to incorporate intersectionality into research designs, and its data issues involving the “curse of dimensionality” where there are too few observations in most datasets to deal with multiple intersecting categories.

The methodology involves reviewing the literature on intersectionality in its various dimensions: its conceptual underpinnings and meanings; its evolution as a concept; its application in various areas; its relationship to gender-based analysis plus (GBA+); its methodological issues and data requirements; its relationship to theory and qualitative as well as quantitative lines of research; and its potential applicability to research and practice in HR.

Intersectionality deals with how interdependent categories such as race, gender and disability intersect to affect outcomes. It is not how each of these factors has an independent or additive effect; rather, it is how they combine together in an interlocking fashion to have an interactive effect that is different from the sum of their individual effects. This gives rise to methodological and data complications that are outlined. Ways in which these complications have been dealt with in the literature are outlined, including interaction effects, separate equations for key groups, reducing data requirements, qualitative analysis and machine learning with Big Data.

Intersectionality has not been dealt with in HR research or practice. In other fields, it tends to be dealt with only in a conceptual/theoretical fashion or qualitatively, likely reflecting the difficulties of applying it to quantitative research.

The wide gap between the theoretical concept of intersectionality and its practical application for purposes of prediction as well as causal analysis is outlined. Trade-offs are invariably involved in applying intersectionality to HR issues. Practical steps for dealing with those trade-offs in the quantitative analyses of HR issues are outlined.

Intersectionality draws attention to the intersecting nature of multiple disadvantages or vulnerability. It highlights how they interact in a multiplicative and not simply additive fashion to affect various outcomes of individual and social importance.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first analysis of the potential applicability of the concept of intersectionality to research and practice in HR. It has obvious relevance for ascertaining intersectional categories as predictors and causal determinants of important outcomes in HR, especially given the growing availability of large personnel and digital datasets.

Intellectual property right constitutes play a forceful role to promote economic growth and create a fortune. However, it is not yet clear to what extent the agricultural intellectual property rights represented by geographical indications of agricultural products (AGIs) can affect the development of regional economy. The purpose of this paper is to analyze this impact and its mechanism as well as to draw policy implications from this empirical analysis.

Using county-level panel data from 2006 to 2020, this paper employed the difference-in-differences (DID) model.

The authors find that AGIs can significantly improve economic development at the county level. The AGIs can stimulate the flow of commercial and industrial capital to the countryside, thus fueling county-level economic development. Unlike AGIs for cereals and cash crops, AGIs for aquatic products and animal products cannot influence or have a negative impact on county-level economic. Compared with Eastern regions, the acquisition of AGIs in Western regions can more significantly boost county-level economic development. Therefore, AGIs can pronouncedly narrow down the gap of cross-county economic growth.

Conclusions of this paper can provide references for building the county-level countryside into a main ground of agricultural economic development and brand construction, continuously promoting the agricultural supply-front structural reform and boosting realization of all-around rural revitalization.

This study explores configurations that promote the development of collective economies in China's rural villages and reveals the multiple development pathways that otherwise remain relatively unexamined in the literature.

The authors obtained first-hand representative case data from 20 villages in 12 counties in 5 provinces in East, West and Central China via fieldwork and applied fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to conduct a configurational comparative study of the development of village collective economies.

This paper identifies five factors in the current literature that affect the development of village collectives, based on an “entrepreneur–situation” analytical framework. Using the fsQCA method, this study further obtains two main configurations of conditions that culminate in the growth of rural collective economies in China. The first solution is the “top-down path”: When entrepreneurial leadership (EL), resource endowment (RE) and government assistance (GA) are present, a village collective economy will experience a high level of development, irrespective of policy support (PS) and villagers' participation (VP). The second solution is the “bottom-up path”: When EL, VP and PS are present and GA is not present, a village collective economy will experience a high level of development, irrespective of RE. In both situations, EL stands out as the core condition for the development of village collective economies, implying the need for the government to vigorously cultivate the entrepreneurial skills and aspirations of village cadres.

Taking a configurational perspective and using an fsQCA approach, this research constructs an “entrepreneur–situation” analytical framework to investigate the key combinations of factors and pathways involved in the high level of development of Chinese village collective economies.

The purpose of this papers is to set out the advantages to local communities of independent representation of older people by older people through active and vibrant older people’s forums and groups and the rationale for Councils in Wales to support their revitalisation and development.

This paper describes how semi-structured action research and follow-up discussion and analysis over a two-year period was undertaken by older people with representatives of Older Peoples Forums and groups to identify a strategy to restart and revitalise independent forums post pandemic to represent the voice of older people to government at all levels.

Facilitation of the independent and self-determined voice of older people through genuine co-production with Forums can help Councils meet statutory duties and ensure their policies and services for older people are developed and informed from the direct experience of those receiving them. This will also help address the impacts of an ageing population and meet the national aim to create age-friendly communities across Wales.

This research provides a basis for Councils to work with Independent Older Peoples Forums and groups to restart and regenerate the forums and promote the self-determined voice of older people to government at all levels.

In an ageing society older people should be empowered and enabled to make their own decisions. The principle of self-determination by older people for older people directly and through co-productive engagement with them by local authorities has meaning and purpose that should be promoted and implemented. If age-friendly communities are to be developed across Wales, then collaboration on this basis is required including through independent 50+ forums in localities.

This study aims to establish the position of the European Union (EU-28) countries in the dynamics of international trade openness linkages and the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) in correlation with the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, research and development (R&D) expenditures, innovation capability and information and communication technology (ICT) adoption.

In the panel data set, comparative analyses were applied to scatter diagrams, correlation and regression analyses and structural equation models using Eurostat and World Economic Forum (WEF) data for the EU-28 countries in the period 2008–2019.

The empirical results did not confirm the hypotheses that a positive correlation exists between GCI and trade openness indicators and between GDP per capita and GCI. The ICT adoption and innovation capability increase GCI, which affects GDP per capita.

The empirical results provide a better understanding of the importance of trade policies, particularly in terms of trade openness and trade shares of the EU-28 countries, as it could contribute to increasing the GCI of the EU-28 countries. Furthermore, the results of this study underline the importance of ICT adoption and innovation capability and the need for appropriate government policies that improve global competitiveness.

This study, through empirical analysis, demonstrates the existence of correlations between trade openness (exports as % of GDP, imports as % of GDP and export market shares as % of world trade), R&D expenditures, innovation capability, ICT adoption, GDP per capita and the GCI in the EU-28 countries. In addition, this study contributes managerial and policy-based implications on driving forces of global competitiveness.