Chris Leggett

If at first you don't succeed: globalized production and organizational learning at the Hyundai Motor Company

This article reviews the development of a global production system through a cross-case analysis of the establishment of Hyundai Motor Companys five major overseas production facilities. It concludes that establishtying a global production network can be a catalyst for organizational learning and the development of new competencies; in particular, that the complexities and uncertainties of operating in unfamiliar economic and cultural contexts provide a powerful impetus to increasing a firms absorptive capacity. The article identifies the strategies that enabled the Hyundai Motor Company to learn from its initial failures in overseas production. It focuses on the localization of production, the internal transfer of experienced staff, the codification of previous experience and the use of aggressive goal-setting. The analysis suggests that organizational resilience, that is the ability to rebound from initial failure, is a further important aspect in the process of organizational learning.

From industrial relations to manpower planning: the transformations of Singapore's industrial relations

This paper applies the strategic choice model of industrial relations to the transformations of industrial relations in Singapore and to their progression from ‘industrial relations’ to ‘manpower planning’. The usefulness of the strategic choice model for explaining the transformations of Singapores industrial relations is formulated as a research question and the paper demonstrates the model as having greater utility than the conventional systems model. The three transformations are from colonial administration to regulated pluralism, 1960–67; from regulated pluralism to corporatism, 1968–78; and from corporatism to corporatist paternalism, 1979–86. The progression to manpower planning has been since 1997. Transformation is defined as morphological change in which elements of the transformed are retained in the new form. A progression, in this case, is a development of the pre-existing form rather than its transformation. The data, which were collected by interviews and from secondary sources, are presented as a historical case study and subjected to analytical induction.

Changing employment relations in the Asia-Pacific region

Discusses the employment relations (ER) of seven countries: Australia, New Zealand and Japan have in different ways been restructuring their ER for increased flexibility. The South Korean process of democratisation has included a reduction in state regulation of unions. Taiwan’s democratisation has led its government to become more active in ER. The People’s Republic of China’s transition from a highly regulated to a “socialist market” economy has had significant implications for ER. In Indonesia, the end of the Soharto regime offered opportunities for greater recognition of workers’ interests, but these were checked initially by political instabilities and the 1997 Asian economic crisis.

Industrial Relations and Enterprise Unionism in Singapore

Abstract The Singapore Governments vision for the future of Singapore, inspired by the exemplary economic progress of Japan, led to a remodelling of the city-states industrial relations. This art...

Perceptions of Conciliation in Singapore: A Tripartite Survey

A survey conducted in Singapore considered tripartite perceptions of and attitudes towards conciliation. The authors hypothesize that, consistent with the prevailing ideology, the parties should indicate considerable acceptance of conciliation, share similar attitudes towards it, and that labour and management should have confidence in the official conciliators. These hypotheses are substantially confirmed by the results of the survey, and the authors conclude that such reservations as were held by labour and management are essentially technical and, therefore, remediable.

The effects of hukou (official household residential status) on perceived human resource management practices and organizational justice in China

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of Chinas official household residential status (hukou) on perceived human resource management (HRM) practices, perceived organizational justice (POJ) and its moderation of the relationship between them. Design/methodology/approach – The data for the study were collected from 775 employees in 36 companies in China. Missing data analysis was conducted in order to identify the pattern associated with personal demographic variables. A one-way between-groups MANOVA was performed to investigate hukou differences in the perceptions of HRM practices and POJ. Confirmative factor analysis was conducted on POJs three-factor measurement model to examine the distinctiveness of the study variables. Findings – Employees registered as agricultural, i.e. rural, hukou, who have migrated to and found employment in urban areas, perceive HRM practices and distributive and procedural justice less favourably than do non-agricultural, i.e. urban, hukou. It also fin...

Greg Bamber, Russell Lansbury, Nick Wailes and Chris F Wright, eds (2016) International and comparative employment relations: national regulation, global changes. Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW. ISBN 978 1 76011 029 1 (pbk); xxvii + 418 pages, RRP A

[Extract] The sixth edition of International and Comparative Employment Relations (the fifth edition was published in 2011, the first in 1987) places a greater emphasis on the varieties of capitalism (VoC) approach than did earlier editions. The additional concluding chapter however suggests students of employment relations look ‘Beyond varieties of capitalism, towards convergence and internationalisation’.

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[Extract] Employers’ associations have received less attention in the industrial relations literature than have trade unions and government agencies. One reason for this may be that inter- country variation in the structure and functions of employers’ associations precludes general schema (Bean 1994: 72). Another is employer reticence to disclose information to researchers, resulting in researchers’ preference for more accessible information on industrial conflict and trade unions (Schmitter and Streeck 1999; Sheldon and Thornthwaite 1999; Traxler 2000). In the case of Singapore, it was recently observed that a reference to the merger of Singapore’s employers’ associations in 1980 was ‘perfunctory’ and substantially underestimated its importance (Sheldon et al. 2015: 438). Gan (2010) and Sheldon et al. (2015) have sought to remedy the apparent neglect. This chapter aims to follow them with an analysis and assessment of the structure, strategies and roles of Singapore’s employers’ associations.

Employers' associations in Singapore: Tripartite engagement

The purpose of this article is to record and analyse the historical circumstances in which Singapore complemented its legacy of British-type collective bargaining with the compulsory arbitration system long practiced in Australia. It notes the role of Australians (particularly one Australian industrial relations scholar at the University of Malaya) in the inception and adoption of industrial arbitration in Singapore. It seeks to identify, analyse, explain and assess the extent of the subsequent divergence of Singapore’s regulatory industrial relations regime from that of Australia since the 1960s. In doing so, it contributes to Asia-Pacific labour history and adds to the literature on international and comparative labour relations with its focus on cross-national influences on national industrial relations regimes.

Australia and the system of arbitration in Singapore

[Extract] As a taught course, international and/or comparative employment relations has become increasingly included in management, industrial relations and human resource management graduate and undergraduate programs over the past decade. In Australia, a public policy orientation towards Asia contributed to this development. Employment relations, as used in these programs, is usually a composite of the disciplines of industrial relations and the objective (rather than prescriptive) phenomena of human resource management. The composite, although variously used in the past has, to some extent, been legitimised by recent publications in the comparative field.