Colm McLaughlin

The Productivity-Enhancing Impacts of the Minimum Wage: Lessons from Denmark and New Zealand

This article adds an international comparative perspective to the reflection on 100 years of minimum wage legislation in Britain by exploring the impact of minimum wage regulations and institutions in Denmark and New Zealand. In particular, it looks at the question of whether minimum wages can raise productivity through the ‘shock effect’. It argues that while they will play a role, a supportive institutional framework is more important in providing coordinated solutions to issues of market failure, such as inadequate levels of training. The article suggests that sectoral bargaining institutions in low-paid sectors may have the potential to facilitate such coordination and enable the high-productivity model to emerge.

The role of productivity coalitions in building a ‘high road’ competitive strategy: The case of Denmark and Ireland

This article draws on the concept of ‘productivity coalitions’ to assess the micro-foundations of Danish and Irish social partnership, and the extent to which they have facilitated a sustainable, ‘high road’ national competitive strategy. It focuses on continuous training to analyse the conditions necessary for effective collaboration between employers and unions. Four key variables that underpin strong productivity coalitions are identified: non-market coordination mechanisms, union ‘embeddedness’, ideological concordance and institutional constraints. The implications are pessimistic for effective collaboration in liberal market economies.

The battle for ‘Middle-earth’: The constitution of interests and identities in The Hobbit dispute

This article draws on an industrial dispute over the filming of The Hobbit in New Zealand in 2010 to contribute to the theorisation of the interplay between interests and identities and our understanding of mobilisation and collective identity. While industrial disputes are typically viewed as conflict between groups with opposing material interests, this may miss the way in which both the identities of those involved and their interests are discursively constituted in articulatory processes. Specifically, we apply Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory and in doing so demonstrate that the dispute was more than a conflict over working conditions, it was a hegemonic struggle to fix meaning. In making this conceptual contribution we highlight a tendency within industrial relations analysis to reify interests.

Overcoming the Problem With Solving Business Problems: Using Theory Differently to Rejuvenate the Case Method for Turbulent Times:

A questioning of the neoliberal consensus in the global economic order is creating turbulence in Western democracies. Long regarded as the only viable capitalist model, neoliberalism is now subjected to increasing scrutiny. Management education that has been aligned to a neoliberal worldview must now respond to this shifting landscape in order to retain its legitimacy. One core element of management education undergoing revision as a result is the case method of teaching. The case method’s traditionally narrow focus on training students to solve business problems is increasingly problematic in an environment where the structure of the capitalist system in which firms operate is now a topic of debate. To address this, we argue for a reconceptualization of the case method’s relationship with theory. This has conventionally taken two forms: a hostility to any inclusion of theory in the analytical process and an approach that uses theory as an instrument for profit maximization. We propose an alternative third approach that encourages students to engage in a critical questioning of business-as-usual capitalism from the perspective of multiple stakeholders, including managers, employees, unions, not-for-profit organizations, government, and the natural environment.

The Role of Ideas in Understanding Industrial Relations Policy Change in Liberal Market Economies

This paper analyzes the uneven processes underpinning industrial relations policy liberalization in New Zealand, Australia, the UK, and Ireland. Drawing upon 140 elite interviews and building upon ideational comparative political theories, the paper highlights the role of ideas in the policy change process. It identifies how particular ideas can be used to construct policy problems, how these ideas can gain legitimacy through battles with competing ideas, and how policy legacies can influence whether ideas take root. The findings from the comparative case analysis expose a critical difference between “positive legacies” and “negative legacies” to account for different liberalization trajectories.