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This paper seeks to examine the impact of labor‐management partnership on organizational performance and industrial relations quality at Korean firms.

Data were collected from 139 firms for organizational‐level research. Hierarchical regression analyses were employed.

The research showed that the partnership principle and the five practices of management efforts to secure jobs, information sharing, fair financial rewards, investment in employee training, and worker participation in management were significantly and positively associated with the quality of industrial relations. The partnership principle and two of these practices (investment in training and fair financial rewards) had significant and positive effects on organizational performance.

The results suggest that the partnership principle on its own does not necessarily lead to improved organizational performance or industrial relations quality, and that a company needs not only to adopt the principle of partnership but also to implement it effectively through specific practices.

The paper examines the impact of the partnership model in Korean contexts and offers practical implications for managers seeking effective implementation of the labor‐management partnership model.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an analytical framework to categorize the quality of industrial relations in foreign affiliates. Using the case of foreign affiliates in Germany, this paper further explores what factors shape the quality of industrial relations in foreign affiliates.

Given the scarcity of research on industrial relations in foreign affiliates, this paper is based on conceptual work as well as on a comparative case investigation of 21 foreign affiliates in Germany, involving informants from both labor and management.

Industrial relations in foreign affiliates in Germany can take four different qualities, based on the following: social partnership; conflict partnership; latently adversarial; and adversarial relations. While previous literature focused on country-of-origin effects, the authors’ case-based investigation further revealed that both affiliate effects and multinational corporation (MNC) effects have a strong impact on the quality of industrial relations in foreign affiliates in Germany.

This paper provides systematic evidence on the presumption that micro-organizational and MNC-specific factors are necessary to gain a deeper understanding of industrial relations in MNCs. Moreover, this paper contributes to the discussion on the quality of industrial relations in foreign affiliates in Germany, by placing results from both single-case studies and management surveys into perspective.

Since the first Volume of this Bibliography there has been an explosion of literature in all the main areas of business. The researcher and librarian have to be able to uncover specific articles devoted to certain topics. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume III, in addition to the annotated list of articles as the two previous volumes, contains further features to help the reader. Each entry within has been indexed according to the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus and thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid information retrieval. Each article has its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. The first Volume of the Bibliography covered seven journals published by MCB University Press. This Volume now indexes 25 journals, indicating the greater depth, coverage and expansion of the subject areas concerned.

The quality of management is the greatest single determinant of industrial performance. Its impact is felt as much in the social as in the economic sphere, in terms of the quality of life in an organisation as in profitability. Given the much publicised shortcomings of industrial relations which are damaging to industry and to the economy, the case for ensuring that managers are adequately trained is not merely compelling, but almost self‐evident.

This paper seeks to examine the relationships between working conditions, innovation activities and industrial relations in two local production systems located in the northern Italy, exploiting data collected through ad‐hoc surveys in 2004 and 2006.

The paper follows a recent stream of literature, which is still quite scanty, that addresses the issue of the implication for workers derived from the introduction of organizational changes. This topic is addressed and extended, taking into consideration both the role of firm level industrial relations and the role of other innovation activities that may influence working conditions.

The results seem to support the position maintained by the advocates of organizational changes. Job empowerment is spurred by the form of organizational changes usually defined as high performance workplace practices. However, such typology of changes in the organization does not seem to be linked with positive trends in safety/security and stress. At the same time the positive role of cooperative industrial relations on the working condition emerges, also as complementary elements to innovation activities.

This work confirms some relevant empirical results obtained in international literature about the linkages between organizational changes and working conditions. At the same time it provides an original perspective of analysis taking into account other influencing factors of workers' well being: good quality industrial relations at firm level and innovation activities such as technological innovation and ICT.

The concept of an Industrial Relations Centre is relevant in the UK today, in the light of the report ‘Management Training in Industrial Relations’, published by the National Economic Development Office, in June 1975. That report is the product of a Working Group on Industrial Relations Training for Managers, set up by the Management Education Training and Develop‐ment Committee of NEDO. It includes the recommendation: ‘…that an Industrial Relations Training Resource Centre should be established. The central aim of such a centre would be to assist companies and other institutions who wished to provide improved industrial relations training for managers…’ (‘Management Training in Industrial Relations’ 1.24)

An empirical study is reported which examines the relationships between industrial relations climate and variables reflecting the state of the firm's performance, industrial relations structure, and overall effectiveness in 28 manufacturing companies. In addition to reporting the patterns of association between each of these aspects, multivariate analyses are employed in order to (i) ascertain the direct and indirect influences of industrial relations climate and other variables under study on company effectiveness, and (ii) examine the assumptions about the direction of causality between industrial relations climate and effectiveness. The results highlight the relationships between the above variables and emphasise the importance of conceptualising industrial relations climate in such a way that can adequately reflect the attitudes and behaviour of industrial relations actors. Path analysis suggests that the pattern of causality is not a simple one but involves reciprocal and feedback relationships. However, the mprovement to the explanatory power of company effectiveness by including the notion of industrial relations limate in research, is clearly demonstrated.

Reports the results of a study examining the relationships between organizational structure (formalization, specialization, participation, and centralization) and human resource practices, (training and internal labour market (ILM) with the state of the firm’s industrial relations. The data were collected by means of extensive interviews with managers and union/employee association representatives from 51 Canadian organizations. The results show that decision‐making centralization has a negative impact on a firm’s industrial relations situations (both from the union’s and the management’s point of view), while training has a positive effect on the quality of a company’s industrial relations. The ILM, on the other hand, did not appear to have a major impact on the firm’s industrial relations. Given the current arguments about the changing nature of industrial relations, and that they are influenced by other aspects of a firm’s operations, our preliminary study has reinforced the need to study in more detail the impact of training and organizational structure on industrial relations.

INTRODUCTION Shop stewards' educational requirements, in terms of individual needs, organisational and even national needs, are reasonably easy to demonstrate. The meeting of these needs, at these various levels, in terms of the quantity and quality of the education provided for shop stewards, is less easy to demonstrate. In fact, any examination of the current situation in the respects, leads to the inescapable conclusion that the responsible providing bodies are, with few exceptions, failing in this most important task.

The issue of training for a job of work is important in most areas of industry, and not least in the area of industrial relations. To be effective, practitioners need not only ability in a range of skills—communications, negotiating, grievance, handling, etc.—but also knowledge of such areas as relevant legislation, agreements in force, disputes, procedures, etc. and continuous up‐dating of these knowledge areas as changes occur, especially changes in legislation related to industrial relations. As a result there would appear, then, to be a need for effective training courses. The available evidence, however, would suggest that unfortunately there is insufficient provision of industrial relations training at the present time, especially for shop stewards. Moreover the deficiency would appear to exist both in terms of the quantity of training opportunities available, and in terms of the quality of training currently provided in that much of the present provision is criticised as being patchy and not related to the needs of the shop steward in particular. This paper aims to examine the reasons for the deficiency in shop steward training and to argue that whilst it is usually explained in terms of what are here called “traditional” reasons—such as lack of finance, lack of agreement between management and trade unions over how training should be organised, etc.—the more fundamental cause is related to differences of opinion between managements and trade unions about the objectives of shop steward training. Moreover, these differences in objectives, it is suggested, are based on issues of “power and control” rather than on traditional reasons, since it is argued industrial relations training can be seen as a factor influencing the way the shop steward operates in his job, which makes it important for either management or trade unions to try to control the way training is undertaken. To the extent that the analysis is correct, then there are important implications for the provision of industrial relations training.