The Case Against Specialist Jurisdiction for Labour Law: The Philosophical Assumptions of a Common Law for Labour Relations

The aim of this paper is to outline the philosophical assumptions that form the basis of the present call for the abolition of specialist jurisdiction for labour law in New Zealand The discussion here focuses on Epstein's (1983a) "A common law for labour relations ..." because it is the key statement of the case against a specialist jurisdiction, and the conclusions he advances have played an important role in the debate about labour law in New Zealand While academic literature has been largely critical of the call for the abolition of the Employment Court, there have been very few attempts to come to terms with the types of arguments used by the "abolitionists". It is argued that an adequate critique needs to be built on an understanding of the philosophical assumptions that are driving the current changes in labour relations legislation

The Importance Of Small Differences: Globalisation And Industrial Relations In Australia And New Zealand

Recent debates in comparative industrial relations scholarship have raised significant questions about the impact of changes in the international economy on national patterns of industrial relations. Globalisation, it has been argued, creates pressures for convergence that will increasingly undermine national diversity in industrial relations institutions and outcomes. At its most extreme, the globalisation thesis predicts "a universal race to the bottom" of labour standards. This globalisation thesis has been broadly criticised in the comparative industrial relations literature. Rather, a growing body of comparative industrial relations literature has pointed to evidence of continued diversity, despite the common pressures associated with changes in the international economy. This literature has focussed on the importance national level institutional variables play in explaining diversity and suggested that differences in national level institutional variables are likely to produce cross-national divergence rather than convergence. While the institutionalist approach represents an important corrective to the globalisation thesis, it has difficulty explaining similarities in patterns of industrial relations changes, despite institutional differences across countries, and is largely unable to explain changes in the institutions themselves. This thesis argues that these limitations of the institutionalist approach reflect its intellectual origins in comparative politics. The major contribution of this thesis is the development of an interaction approach the relationship between international economic change and the domestic institutions of industrial relations. This alternative theoretical approach, which is drawn from concepts in the political economy tradition in industrial relations and the international political economy literature, identifies four key variables the shape the relationship between international economic change and the domestic institutions of industrial relations: namely, the international economic regime; the national production profile; the accumulation strategy of the state; and the role of institutional effects. The thesis tests the explanatory power of the interaction approach by focussing on the comparison between two closely matched countries- Australia and New Zealand- during three periods of significant economic change in the international economy: the end of the nineteenth century; the immediate post world war two period; and, in the late 1960s. It shows that each of these periods a focus on changes in the international economy and how they impact the interests of employers, workers and the state helps explain both similarities and differences in industrial relations developments in the two countries. In doing so it demonstrates the importance of what appear to be small differences between the cases. The ability of the interaction approach to account for similarities and differences across three time periods in two most similar countries suggests that it may have broader application in cross-national comparison and that may provide the basis for a more general reassessment of the relationship between the contemporary wave of globalisation and industrial relations institutions and outcomes

The Case Against Specialist Jurisdiction for Labour Law: The Philosophical Assumptions of a Common Law for Labour Relations

The aim of this paper is to outline the philosophical assumptions that form the basis of the present call for the abolition of specialist jurisdiction for labour law in New Zealand The discussion here focuses on Epstein's (1983a) "A common law for labour relations ..." because it is the key statement of the case against a specialist jurisdiction, and the conclusions he advances have played an important role in the debate about labour law in New Zealand While academic literature has been largely critical of the call for the abolition of the Employment Court, there have been very few attempts to come to terms with the types of arguments used by the "abolitionists". It is argued that an adequate critique needs to be built on an understanding of the philosophical assumptions that are driving the current changes in labour relations legislation

The Transfer of management ideas to a western "Periphery" : the case of corporate social responsibility in Australia

Previous research has revealed that management knowledge can be transferred across national borders as a result of different carriers, but also acknowledges that the institutional context of different countries can shape how management knowledge is diffused. We demonstrate the importance of macro institutional arrangements on the transfer of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to Australia since the early 1990s. Taking examples of financial markets (socially responsible forms of investment) and international environmental management standards (International Standardization Organization certification) as illustrative of how CSR practices have been diffused in Australia, it is argued that the Australian institutional context has produced a limited transfer of CSR in a largely instrumental and legitimating form.19 page(s

Lost in translation? An actor-network approach to HRIS implementation

Available evidence suggests that the adoption of IT-enabled Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS) has not produced the widely predicted transformation of Human Resources (HR) to a strategic business partner. We examine the relationship between HRIS and the HR function by applying actor-network theory (ANT) to an HRIS implementation project. The focus on how actor networks are formed and reformed during implementation may be particularly well suited to explaining why the original aims of the HRIS can be displaced or lost in translation. We suggest that the approach afforded by ANT enables us to better understand the ongoing and contingent process of HRIS implementations