Janet Druker

Between hard and soft HRM: human resource management in the construction industry

The rapid change in the economic environment has not resulted in the development of sophisticated human resource management practices in the UK construction industry. There are similarities between personnel practice in construction and ‘hard’ models of HRM, particularly in relation to manual workers, but non-manual employment resembles more the conditions where ‘soft’ HRM might be expected. Focusing on the HRM levers developed by John Storey, HRM practices are examined in relation to the role of personnel departments, line management responsibility, performance management, and values and beliefs of personnel managers. The survey results suggest few signs of fundamental or far-reaching innovation in human resource management practice in the construction industry despite the changing shape of construction companies. There are some, though limited, signs of change in respect to expectations of training and employee development in the future.

Employment relations on major construction projects: the London 2012 Olympic construction site

The construction of the London 2012 Olympic Park provided a model of employee relations that crossed organisational boundaries. This model was countercultural, contrasting with the unregulated approaches that are commonplace in construction and contrasting too with collaborative models that have been developed on other major projects.

Blacklisting and its legacy in the UK construction industry: employment relations in the aftermath of exposure of the Consulting Association

This paper explores responses to the exposure of blacklisting in the UK construction industry in the period following the closure of the Consulting Association (CA) in 2009. It asks whether employer collusion to blacklist in this way has been terminated and concludes that it is now largely of historical interest although other forms of anti-union activity continue. It highlights particularly the historic and continuing importance of ‘double breasting’ and reports on divergent employer paths in the aftermath of the exposure and subsequent closure of the activities of the CA.

Joint book review: Daniel Berliner, Anne Regan Greenleaf, Milli Lake, Margaret Levi and Jennifer Noveck, Labour Standards in International Supply Chains: Aligning Rights and Incentives and Colin C Williams, Confronting the Shadow Economy: Evaluating Tax Compliance and Behaviour Policies

This review considers two publications, both of them concerned with the interaction of governments, business and workers and with the ways in which standards might be set and behaviour formalized and regulated. The first of these publications, by Berliner et al. (2015), is international in scope. It deals with the interaction of global companies, their local suppliers, workers and governments. The second, by Williams (2014), is focused on Europe and on national level policies to bring wage payments into full compliance with tax law. This short review deals with the two books in turn. Underlying both of these studies is a critical question. How can national governments and policy makers confront the power of global business? When governments are competing for inward investment, how can they set standards that will carry credibility and be accepted by domestic populations? The Rana Plaza disaster in 2013 cast a spotlight on the ways in which high street brands in North America and Europe impact on the working conditions and lives of workers of major suppliers. Companies such as Primark, Mango and Gap were implicated in the tragedy when a commercial building in Dhaka, the base for garment manufacturing for suppliers of major international brands, collapsed, resulting in 1129 fatalities and a further 2515 injured (Berliner et al., 2015). The disaster highlighted the exploitative conditions suffered by the workforce, many of them young women, and drew comparison with the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in New York City, just over 100 years before, when the workers – again many young women – were locked into the factory and died in the fire (Motlagh, 2014). Following the Rana Plaza collapse, after a slow and evasive series of responses from the Bangladesh authorities, local employers and the international brands doing business in Dhaka, two associations, divided in perspective between EU-based companies and those that are largely of North American origin, were 646285WES0010.1177/0950017016646285Work, employment and societyJoint book review research-article2016

Lean Culture for the Construction Industry: Building Responsible and Committed Project Teams

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