Markus Helfen

To confront the climate crisis requires fundamental system change in order to break the convention of relentless economic exploitation of nature. In this Special Issue we extend understanding of the opportunities for an organizing perspective on sustainability in order that organization studies might contribute more effectively to the challenges of organizing sustainably. This organizing perspective is particularly sensitive to (1) a variety of forms and practices of sustainable organizing in different societal spheres and on different levels, (2) the social institutions, logics and value systems in which these forms and practices are embedded, (3) the power and politics of promoting (or blocking) sustainable organization, and (4) the ways in which work, voice, participation, and inclusion are organized and contribute to developing societal capabilities. These features formed the basis of our original call for papers and we review selected literature on sustainability, including the contribution of organization studies and the articles in this Special Issue, through this organizing perspective. In so doing we identify four key themes of a future research agenda that builds from the foundations of existing research and addresses key current limitations in both theory and practice: sustainability requires social justice; connecting local and global scale shifts; democratizing governance; and acting collectively. We conclude with some implications for our own scholarship in organization studies if we are to meet the twin challenges of the need for new theorizing in combination with devising practically relevant support for change.

Labor–management relations (LMR) – also referred to as labor, employment, or industrial relations – concerns how relationships between employers and workers are regulated, organized, and experienced. As a field, LMR focuses on the specific institutions, social actors, and processes that shape the dynamics and outcomes of these employment relationships. Because LMR has profound implications for individual well‐being, organizational functioning, and the socioeconomic performance and cohesion of societies, it enjoys enduring interest from policy‐makers, practitioners, and academics in various disciplines. The entry summarizes core ideas in LMR, delineates the origins and perspectives in LMR as an academic field, and details the institutions and actors of LMR. It ends with an overview of current developments.

Zusammenfassung: Gemessen an den Bewertungsmaßstäben einer sich interdisziplinär und humanistisch verstehenden Arbeitswissenschaft klafft ein tiefer Abgrund zwischen dem erreichten Wissensstand einer nachhaltigen Arbeitsgestaltung und der dokumentierten Arbeitswirklichkeit am Beginn der globalen Lieferketten. Dieser kommentierende Beitrag lädt deshalb zum interdisziplinären Dialog zwischen der Arbeitswissenschaft und ihren sozialwissenschaftlichen Schwesterdisziplinen ein, um die arbeitswissenschaftliche Forschung zu globalen Lieferketten zu erweitern. Vor dem Hintergrund der Berichte der Internationalen Arbeitsorganisation (ILO) wird zunächst dargestellt, wie die Lücke zwischen formaler Standardsetzung einerseits und der Einhaltung der Regeln in der Praxis andererseits in der derzeitigen sozialwissenschaftlichen Literatur interpretiert wird. Zudem werden anhand der privaten Zulieferaudits und der öffentlichen Arbeitsinspektion einzelne Befunde betrachtet, die Hinweise auf besondere Beiträge der Arbeitswissenschaft zur Thematik geben können. Der Beitrag schließt mit Überlegungen, wie die Arbeitswissenschaft die Internationalisierung ihrer Forschung ausdehnen kann, um in der Debatte um die Durchsetzung globaler Arbeitsstandards – etwa durch das Lieferkettengesetz – Gehör zu finden.

Die Beiträge in diesem Band setzen sich mit aktuellen Veränderungen in Organisationen und Unternehmungsnetzwerken unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Konkurrenzen und Solidaritäten auseinander. Dabei stehen neue Anforderungen an die Arbeitenden im Mittelpunkt der Beiträge. Anton Kobel, dem dieser Band gewidmet ist, hat seiner Praxis einen erweiterten Begriff von Konkurrenzen und Solidaritäten zugrunde gelegt, der WissenschaftlerInnen und PraktikerInnen inspiriert hat. Dementsprechend analysieren die Beiträge vor allem Veränderungen in der Arbeitswelt und die Antworten der Interessenvertretungen in Betrieben und Unternehmungen, entlang von Wertschöpfungsketten sowie auf europäischer und globaler Ebene.

While inter-organizational coordination among firms in networks has become a widespread phenomenon and the governance of inter-organizational networks has garnered considerable attention in the management literature, the repercussions of the network form for managing and organizing work remain a considerable gap in the literature. Building on Gittell’s concept of relational coordination, we explore the inter-organizational work collaboration in four German airports’ ground handling operations. By zooming-in on ramp agents’ boundary spanning work role, our comparative study illustrates whether and how a collaboration in inter-organizational work processes is brought about in practice. Our findings reveal the various practices ramp agents deploy in order to handle the tensions emerging from divergent organizational jurisdictions and the requirements for collaboration. We also illuminate how the field-level context influences inter-organizational collaboration by setting conditions such as workload and time restrictions in distributed service delivery.

Organisational restructuring towards vertical disintegration and the accompanying rise of service delivery network (SDN) calls for closer attention, studying whether and how work and employment are strategically managed across organisational boundaries. In this paper, we adopt a “strategy‐as‐practice” approach to explain the emergence of an Human Resource Management (HRM) strategy which is geared towards managing work across organisational boundaries. Based on a comparison of two German major hub airports, we find that differences in network‐oriented HRM strategising in areas such as recruiting, remuneration and training result from micro‐political game playing. In this piecemeal process, management as well as external and internal stakeholders such as workers' representatives, and local and federal politicians participate by using their inter‐organisational relationships and institutionalised power resources to shape a network‐oriented HRM practice. With these findings, we contribute not only to HRM research from a strategy‐as‐practice perspective that is sensitive to institutions, but also to research on inter‐organisational collaboration that has neglected issues of HRM so far, by and large.

The Cambridge Handbook of the Changing Nature of Work - edited by Brian J. Hoffman April 2020

In this article, we ask how organizational restructuring towards a network form of service delivery challenges an established form of employment relations in Germany, that is labour–management collaboration. Building on a theoretical discussion of the marketization hypothesis, we develop a structuration perspective on the relationship between network restructuring and labour–management collaboration, which highlights the political economy of inter‐firm networks. Empirically, we focus on two major airport authorities in Germany. Our findings show how these authorities at the core of service delivery networks face a strategic trade‐off between short‐term labour cost reductions and more adversarial employment relations. Apart from coinciding with a deterioration in working conditions for service workers, the handling of this trade‐off depends on managers’ and worker representatives’ commitment to collaboration across the network. While unions and works councils initially continued with social partnership‐type practices, the more adversarial management practices for enacting the network restructuring cause a fragmentation on the workers’ side and increase the conflict potential. We conclude that the agency of management and worker representatives in the enactment of inter‐firm networks oscillates between more partnership‐like and more conflictive practices, which turn the network restructuring into a political process with divergent outcomes for employment relations.

German employers' associations first introduced a so‐called “bargaining‐free” membership (BFM) category in 1990, giving companies the option to join and access services while avoiding the obligations arising to regular members from industry‐level collective agreements with unions. To explain how this phenomenon contributes to change in the German political economy, we investigate why some associations offer their members BFM status whereas others have refused to introduce this option. Controlling for influences such as size and industry, our multivariate analysis of survey data shows that four sets of influences are positively associated with BFM: the role of courts' judicial decisions as “door openers,” structural characteristics of diverging business environments, the evaluation of multiemployer bargaining by the leadership of the association, and the strategic choices of associations.

Ensuring social responsibility is a continued challenge in value creation processes that are globally dispersed among multiple organizations. We use the literature on interorganizational network management to shed new light on the question of how employment relations can be managed more responsibly in global value networks (GVN). In contrast to the structure oriented global value chain perspective, a network management perspective highlights the practices by which employment relations can be addressed in the context of plural forms of network governance. Using examples of GVN in the automotive and garment industries we illustrate how the network management practices of selecting, allocating, regulating and evaluating can enable lead firms and suppliers to effectively deal with social responsibility challenges on the level of whole networks. We also discuss how network management practices can address field-level and firm-level constraints for the management of multiemployer relations in GVN.