International and comparative employment relations: National regulation, global changes. Sixth edition. Edited by Greg J. BAMBER, Russell D. LANSBURY, Nick WAILES and Chris F. WRIGHT

Date01 December 2016
Published date01 December 2016
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/ilr.12050
BOOK REVIEWS
International and comparative employment relations: National regulation,
global changes. Sixth edition. Edited by Greg J. BAMBER, Russell D. LANSBURY,
Nick WAILES and Chris F. WRIGHT. London, Sage, 2016. xxvii + 418 pp.
ISBN 978-1-47391-154-3.
This is the sixth edition of a reader on “international and comparative employ-
ment relations” (formerly “industrial relations”), which encompasses two comparative
chapters (introduction and conclusion) and 12 country case studies. The latter discuss
country-specic employment relations settings and provide an update on recent changes
in this regard, while the two comparative chapters discuss these changes within the wider
framework of “varieties of capitalism”.1
The relevance (and limits) of the varieties-of-capitalism approach in understand-
ing and interpreting recent changes in the industrial/employment relations system is
discussed extensively in the comparative chapters, and it is also integrated into some
of the country chapters. This approach has mainly distinguished two Weberian “ideal
types” of market organization: the liberal market economy and the coordinated market
economy. Those who believe in the efciency and equity of “the invisible hand of the
market” in organizing economies and societies argue for a low level of market regula-
tion, while those who believe that free markets lead to market imperfection, inequality
and inefciency prefer the visible hand of (often public) regulation and coordination
for efciency and equity. In the 1980s, this dualism was epitomized by the liberal market
economies of the United States and, more widely, the “Anglo-Saxon” countries, on the
one hand, and the coordinated market economies of Germany and other, more regulated
European countries, on the other. The present volume acknowledges that the deregu-
lation of markets, especially the labour market, has become a major driver of change
in the context of globalization. A central research question is therefore whether or not
this common dominant trend has led to convergence or divergence across the employ-
ment relations systems of different countries. It is indeed tempting to ask whether such
large-scale deregulation does not lead to the dismantling of regulations in the coord-
inated market economies as well and, hence, to a convergence of all economies towards
a liberal market economy model.
However, while attempts at mainstreaming deregulation in the wake of the as-
cendency of neoliberalism have been made everywhere, the main question is whether
or not different industrial/employment relations systems adapt differently or similarly
1 Peter A. Hall and David Soskice (eds): Varieties of capitalism: The institutional foundations of compara-
tive advantage. New York, NY, Oxford University Press, 2001.
Copyright © The author 2016
Journal compilation © International Labour Organization 2016
International Labour Review, Vol. 155 (2016), No. 4

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