The Workers of Nations

The new international economy is today the single most important factor shaping relations between employers, unions, and governments in the world's advanced industrial societies. While companies compete in global markets with firms around the world, workers remain fixed in each country and are influenced by local the customs and mores. This book explores how globalization affects the contemporary workplace and how workplace policies can make nations more internationally competitive. Unlike other country-by-country treatments of the subject, this analysis compares and contrasts the experiences of different nations around important developments, such as the labor market consequences of regional trading pacts, the international diffusion of new forms of work organization, and the strategies that nations are pursuing to keep their work systems competitive. The contributors come from a variety of disciplines but all bear expertise in international industrial relations.

Readership: MBA courses in International Human Resources.

Edited by Sanford M. Jacoby, Professor of Human Resources and Human Systems Development, University of California, Los Angleles

"There is a distinguished cast-list, headed by leading business and labour management historian Sanford Jacoby ... the book comprises a highly stimulating and thought-provoking collection of essays ... it can be recommended to all those interested in the labour management implications of economic internationalization ... There is an important message, too, implicit in the collective findings of these essays. Although globalization is a powerful force, national institutions and actors are not altogether powerless." - Middle East Business Review

"valuable compendium" - W.R. Garside, University of Birmingham, Business History, April 1997

"the book comprises a highly stimulating and thought-provoking collection of essays ... it can be recommended to all those interested in the labour management implications of economic internationalisation" - Andrew Pendleton, University of Bradford Management Centre, Middle East Business Review, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1997

"This book offers a significant contribution to an increasingly important subject of study. The essays in this book are uniformly well written, well researched and of high quality, reflecting the work of authors who are without exception well-respected experts in their various areas of concentration. Jacoby and colleagues are to be commended for a first-rate book in a new area of research , a book that deserves to be widely read (and used for teaching) by those interested in the place of labor in the new global economy, - Lower Turner. Cornell University."