Jacques Bélanger

The nature of front-line service work: distinctive features and continuity in the employment relationship

Empirical studies increasingly reflect the importance of service work in the economy. This article analyses the implications of this evolution for theories of work and employment. It critically reviews some key notions that are taken for granted in the research literature on service work and elaborates an alternative conceptual model. A deeper understanding of service work is possible only if the worker-customer interaction is conceived as part of the social structure that shapes it, namely the employment relationship. This article throws light on the interconnections between management control and customer demands and suggests that these have a mutually reinforcing effect which puts pressure on employees. It insists on both the distinctive features of front-line service work and the founding principles of the employment relationship that still apply beyond such categories.

Towards a Political Economy Framework: TNCs as National and Global Players

Transnational corporations (TNCs), like all large and complex formal organizations, have two core features. First, they produce goods and services that satisfy consumer needs, and in the course of doing so provide income and employment to large numbers of people. Second, they are political actors, using power to shape the conditions under which they conduct their productive activities and as a result profoundly influence the lives of employees, customers and local communities. Something of these two aspects was captured by The Economist (27 March 1993) when it called them ‘everybody’s favourite monster’. The purpose of this chapter is to contribute theoretically to the second ‘political’ view but without losing sight of the first.

Generalizing from Workplace Ethnographies : From Induction to Theory

Two modes of generalizing from the large set of workplace ethnographies now in existence are compared. These are the results of the Workplace Ethnography (WE) data set and holistic modeling (HM) based on a more theoretically driven project. In the treatment of specific cases, there is impressive complementarity between the two. But the WE data fail to capture some key features of leading studies, because they do not treat cases holistically. They might also be developed by including studies not included to date. A more explicit theoretical approach offers some firmer grounds for generalizing, and new directions for comparative ethnographies arise.

Patterns of corporate influence in the host country: a study of ABB in Canada

This article draws on our four case studies to examine the nature of the relationships between ABB and its Canadian subsidiaries. Starting from a critical review of the literature, it develops a framework that is sensitive to three levels of analysis: the factors that shape the parent corporations strategies, the characteristics of the host countries in which the MNC operates and the characteristics of the local subsidiaries themselves. The empirical material illustrates how innovation is generated by a two-way process, in which the initiative of corporate leaders challenges the ‘interpretation’ of local actors. In doing so, we point to a number of key omissions in the influential attempt by Bartlett and Ghoshal to use ABB to develop a managerial theory of the firm. This research also leads to broader considerations regarding the interface between markets and organizations. As distinct from the orthodox view, a transnational corporation may be conceived as a mediator between the market and a local subsidiary. In many ways, the global corporation channels and mediates the impact of external market forces on internal organizational actors, through a process involving the exercise of politics and power. The article has significant implications for decision making on human resource management. In particular it stresses that local managers, local unions, and employees can think and act strategically only in as far as they properly assess the limits of their respective sphere of organizational autonomy within the corporation.

La recodification de la relation d'emploi

Jacques Belanger, Christian Thuderoz : Die Neukodifizierung der Beziehung im Arbeitsverhaltnis. ; ; Dieser Aufsatz mochte die tiefgehenden Veranderungen aufzeichnen, die in den Unternehmen Frankreichs und Quebecs in Bezug auf die Regulierung des Arbeitsverhaltnisses beobachtet werden. Der entstehende soziale Kompromiss unterscheidet sich vom Kompromiss, der von den Tarifaktoren der Arbeitswelt seit dem zweiten Weltkrieg ubernommen wurde. Wahrend der sogenannte Fordistische Kompromiss auf der Beziehung zwischen Arbeitsleistung und Arbeitslohn beruhte, bildet sich der jetzt entstehende Kompromiss - der noch nicht den Zusammenhang und die institutionnelle Unterstutzung des vorausgehenden besitzt - auf der Grundlage einer Ubereinstimmung zwischen Produktivitat und Beschaftigung. Das Feld der produktiven Wirkungskraft wird somit zu einem Ziel der sozialen Regulierung und fuhrt zu fortschrittlicheren Formen der Beziehungsregulierung.

U.S. MULTINATIONALS AND THE CONTROL OF SUBSIDIARY EMPLOYMENT POLICIES

The authors examine whether U.S. multinational companies (MNCs) are distinctive in the degree to which they exert direct control over policy on human resources and employment relations (HR/ER) in their foreign subsidiaries. The results confirm the distinctiveness of U.S. MNCs in their greater degree of direct control of policy, compared not only with non-U.S. firms but with every other major nationality or national grouping of MNCs: France, Germany, the Nordic group, the rest of Europe, and Japan. U.S. control of HR/ER policy is greater not just in the aggregate, but for most individual items. Finally, while levels of control over subsidiaries vary among host countries studied (Canada, Ireland, Spain, and the United Kingdom) the greater U.S. orientation to control relative to non-U.S. MNCs holds regardless of host.

Discretion in employment relations policy among foreign-controlled multinationals in Canada

This article assesses the extent to which the foreign-controlled subsidiaries of multinational firms have the discretion to establish their employment relations policies. Drawing on a survey of the activities of foreign-controlled multinational companies in Canada, it considers three lines of analysis: the parent company’s country of origin, the subsidiary’s specific organizational capabilities and its position in global value chains. While our results confirm that US-controlled subsidiaries have lower discretion than those from continental Europe and Asia, they also highlight the need to go beyond country-of-origin analysis. Organizational capabilities and the subsidiary’s role in global value chains are also important predictors of subsidiary discretion on employment relations policy.

Why Are Some Subsidiaries of Multinationals the Source of Novel Practices while Others Are Not? National, Corporate and Functional Influences

It has frequently been argued that multinational companies are moving towards network forms whereby subsidiaries share different practices with the rest of the company. This paper presents large-scale empirical evidence concerning the extent to which subsidiaries input novel practices into the rest of the multinational. We investigate this in the field of human resources through analysis of a unique international data set in four host countries – Canada, Ireland, Spain and the UK – and address the question of how we can explain variation between subsidiaries in terms of whether they initiate the diffusion of practices to other subsidiaries. The data support the argument that multiple, rather than single, factor explanations are required to more effectively understand the factors promoting or retarding the diffusion of human resource practices within multinational companies. It emerges that national, corporate and functional contexts all matter. More specifically, actors at subsidiary level who seek to initiate diffusion appear to be differentially placed according to their national context, their place within corporate structures and the extent to which the human resource function is internationally networked.

Teamwork and Internal Labour Markets: A Study of a Canadian Aluminium Smelter

This article seeks to explain the difficulties of introducing and benefiting from teamwork in North American unionized settings. Detailed observation and interviews in an aluminium smelter reveal that the potential of more flexible and collective work arrangements was limited by institutional constraints. Some recurring tensions relate to the interplay between the system of rules already in place, which govern the internal labour market, and the new pattern of work which management seeks to implement.

The ‘hollowing out’ of the national subsidiary in multinational companies: is it happening, does it matter, what are the strategic consequences?

This article explores the effects of corporate organizational structure and of subsidiary discretion within multinational companies (MNCs). It draws on a representative survey of the most senior HR practitioner in foreign- and domestic-controlled subsidiaries in Canada. Key findings point to the importance of subsidiary discretion, especially discretion over human resource management. Greater subsidiary discretion is associated with a range of positive outcomes: securing international product and service mandates; greater subsidiary influence within the MNC; the promotion and protection of subsidiary employment (increased headcounts, less offshoring, more onshoring); and enhanced engagement with domestic institutions. These results highlight the strategic importance for union, civil society and public policy actors, as well as MNC subsidiary managers themselves, to focus on the drivers of subsidiary discretion, as opposed to the ‘hollowing out’ of corporate structures, and to weave that discretion into larger policy narratives to promote local economies.