The Oxford Handbook of Employment Relations: Comparative Employment Systems

There have been numerous accounts exploring the relationship between institutions and firm practices. However, much of this literature tends to be located into distinct theoretical-traditional 'silos', such as national business systems, social systems of production, regulation theory, or varieties of capitalism, with limited dialogue between different approaches to enhance understanding of institutional effects. Again, evaluations of the relationship between institutions and employment relations have tended to be of the broad-brushstroke nature, often founded on macro-data, and with only limited attention being accorded to internal diversity and details of actual practice. The Handbook aims to fill this gap by bringing together an assembly of comprehensive and high quality chapters to enable understanding of changes in employment relations since the early 1970s. Theoretically-based chapters attempt to link varieties of capitalism, business systems, and different modes of regulation to the specific practice of employment relations, and offer a truly comparative treatment of the subject, providing frameworks and empirical evidence for understanding trends in employment relations in different parts of the world.

Most notably, the Handbook seeks to incorporate at a theoretical level regulationist accounts and recent work that link bounded internal systemic diversity with change, and, at an applied level, a greater emphasis on recent applied evidence, specifically dealing with the employment contract, its implementation, and related questions of work organization. It will be useful to academics and students of industrial relations, political economy, and management.

Adrian Wilkinson, Director of the Centre for Work, Organisation, and Wellbeing, Griffith Business School, Griffith University,Geoffrey Wood, Chair of International Business; Adjunct Professor, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick; Griffith University,Richard Deeg, Professor and Chair of Political Science, Temple University

Adrian Wilkinson is Professor and Director of the Centre for Work, Organisation and Wellbeing at Griffith University, Australia. Prior to his 2006 appointment, Adrian was Professor of Human Resource Management at Loughborough University. Adrian has also worked at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. He holds Visiting Professorships at Loughborough University, Sheffield University, and the University of Durham, and is an Academic Fellow at the Centre for International Human Resource Management at the Judge Institute, University of Cambridge. He has authored/co-authored /edited twenty books and over one hundred and forty articles in academic journals.

Geoffrey Wood is Professor of International Business, University of Warwick Previously, he was Professor and Director of Research at Middlesex University Business School and before that, taught at Rhodes University, South Africa and Coventry University, Coventry, UK. He currently is Overseas Research Associate of the University of the Witwatersrand. He has authored/co-authored/edited twelve books, and over one hundred articles in peer-reviewed journals, including Work and Occupations, Work Employment and Society, Organization Studies, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Human Relations, Economy and Society, Human Resource Management (US)


Richard Deeg is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Temple University. He received his PhD from MIT and has been a Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany. He has written extensively on financial market regulation, institutional theory, and varieties of capitalism. His publications include Finance Capitalism Unveiled: Banks and the German Political Economy (University of Michigan, 1999) and dozens of articles on German and European political economy in various journals, including Comparative Political Studies, Economy & Society, Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of International Business Studies, Publius: The Journal of Federalism, Small Business Economics, Socio-Economic Review, West European Politics, and World Politics.