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The criterion differentiating “protective labor legislation” and “industrial relations legislation” is not whether they are for or against the interest of labor. The interest is that of the general public, as is the case with all legislation. The basic difference concerns the parties to two types of labor contracts. Protective labor legislation concerns the individual contract and labor relations legislation concerns the contract between the specific groups in the field.

The campaign for striker replacement legislation, which began in the late 1980s and had effectively ended by the mid-1990s, was the most important political battle over labor legislation since the defeat of the Labor Law Reform Bill in 1978. Striker replacement was the AFL-CIO’s top legislative priority in the early 1990s and, coming quickly after the passage of NAFTA, which labor had opposed, the defeat of its campaign solidified organized labor’s reputation for failure in legislative battles. As yet, however, the political campaign for striker replacement legislation has attracted surprisingly little attention from industrial relations scholars.

Government corruption and secrecy are not new phenomena in Africa; however, international scrutiny has grown as nations end decades of conflict and seek to develop, donor nations consider providing more aid, and investors and transnational corporations look to the area for oil and other resources. Given that corrupt government activities account for millions of dollars diverted from public coffers each year in developing nations and lead to unfair benefit distribution to citizens, the chapter examines the global network of actors attempting to advance the international norm of government accountability to constrain corruption through advocating for the adoption of access-to-information legislation. The chapter also explores the relationship between perception of corruption in Africa and four political institutions of vertical accountability. The findings indicate that perception of corruption is inversely correlated with news media rights, civil liberties, and political rights. However, adopting access-to-information legislation or planning to adopt the law was not correlated with the perception of corruption.

The spread of corporate board quota legislation is studied in light of diffusion theory. Mechanisms of diffusion, path dependency and critical junctures can contribute to explaining the spread of policy reforms, such as the corporate board quota legislation. The empirical section describes the Norwegian reform process and maps out the ongoing European and global reform processes and debates. Seven countries, in addition to Norway, have in recent years initiated legal reforms and adopted corporate board quota rules: Spain, Iceland, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Malaysia. However, the debates over the introduction of parallel legislation extend further, and are a burning issue in several other Western European countries, as well as globally. The discussion addresses why this policy spreads, and tries to understand the complexities of factors that have led to the diffusion of public debate and legal reform of corporate board quota.

In the US minimum wages were initially enacted by individual states, beginning with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1912. These laws were modeled on legislation enacted over the previous two decades in Australia, New Zealand, and England (Fisher, 1926, chap. 8; Hammond, 1915, 1913; Hobson, 1915; Hart, 1994, chaps. 2 & 3; Morris, 1986). From 1912 to 1923, the legislatures of 16 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia passed minimum wage legislation, although not all of them were operational by the end of this period (Brandeis, 1935, p. 501; Clark, 1921; Millis & Montgomery, 1938, chap. 6; Morris, 1930, chap. 1).

Although corporate social responsibility (CSR) is typically conceptualized as a discretionary pursuit that firms voluntarily engage in, state intervention in CSR — which we call legislated CSR — has been increasing globally. The nature and scope of CSR legislations, however, vary among countries. This chapter provides a broad overview of legislated CSR but it also presents a detailed analysis of a specific CSR legislation, the CSR law of India, in order to closely examine how and why CSR legislations emerge and what could be their implications for CSR.

This chapter explores the Slovenian equal opportunities policy in the context of globalization debates. Focusing mainly on the equal opportunities legislation in Slovenia and the other recent European Union (EU) member states, the aim of the chapter is to reflect upon globalization as Europeanization and as supraterritorialization. Supraterritorial processes, such as the second wave of Western feminist movement established a mutual relationship with feminists in the former Yugoslavia during the 1980s. Feminism and the feminist movement in Yugoslavia and in Slovenia in the 1980s and in the beginning of the 1990s, in particular, represent an important basis for gender equality politics and legislation in Slovenia. Another significant element that contributes to the introduction of gender equality legislation is EU integration. In Slovenia and also in other Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries that recently joined the European Union, the accession played a considerable role in adopting gender equality legislation. Europeanization in the context of equal opportunities policy leads to the homogenization process of standards for gender equality in the EU member states. In terms of legislation in member countries, the Europeanization of gender equality policy is performed as top-down politics particularly in recent member states, such as CEE. Using the example of gender equality policy in Slovenia, this chapter analyzes equal opportunities policy as a concept and as a legal mechanism emerging from the Western tradition, which was directly applied to CEE countries, such as Slovenia, when they joined the EU.

Globally, jurisdictions have made several attempts to eliminate and minimize discrimination in employment. These include moral suasion, social justice arguments, business case arguments, and legislative enactments. Whilst the former has had limited success, the passage of legislation has proved instrumental, not only in containing the perpetration of discrimination based on protected grounds but also in increasing awareness of the disadvantages which result from the disparate treatment meted out to persons as a result of their immutable characteristics. Disabilities are one such grounds. Where legislation exists, it typically prohibits disparate treatment in relation to persons with disabilities in the areas of employment, education, and the provision of goods and services. This chapter analyses a sample of discrimination cases, with claimants who have alleged discrimination based on their diagnosis of autism or a related disorder within the autism spectrum. These cases are within the United Kingdom and have been decided by Employment Tribunals in England. The cases and decisions are held at the office of the Employment Tribunal Service in Suffolk and are accessible via their online repository. The sample of Tribunal cases presented here relate to various employment practices within British workplaces.

We investigate how firms’ responses to misconduct change when the institutional environment becomes more stringent. Organizational theory offers conflicting perspectives on whether new legislation will increase or decrease pressure on firms to take remedial action following misconduct. The dominant perspective posits that new legislation increases expectations of firm behavior, amplifying pressure on them to take remedial action after misconduct. A more recent perspective, however, suggests that the mere necessity to meet more stringent regulatory requirements certifies firms as legitimate to relevant audiences. This certification effect buffers firms, reducing the pressure for them to take remedial action after misconduct. Using a temporary, largely arbitrary exemption from a key provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, we show that firms that were not required to meet all the regulatory standards of good governance it required became 45% more likely to replace their CEOs following the announcement of an earnings restatement after Sarbanes-Oxley. On the other hand, those that were required to meet all of Sarbanes-Oxley’s provisions became 26% less likely to replace their CEOs following a restatement announcement. Ironically, CEOs at firms with a legislative mandate intended to increase accountability for corporate misconduct shoulder less blame than do CEOs at firms without such legislative demands.