FAOS research article wins international recognition

The research journal Socio-Economic Review is celebrating its 20th anniversary and is republishing 20 of their best research articles. One of the selected articles, 'Mapping the frontier of theory in industrial relations: the contested role of worker representation', is about new approaches within studies of labor market relations and was written by Christian Lyhne Ibsen (FAOS),  Maite Tapia (Michigan State University) and Thomas A. Kochan (MIT Sloan School of Management). The article was published in 2015 and is considered to be one of the best contributions in the journal's history.

The article focuses on the widespread decline of trade unions and the emergence of various alternative forms of worker voice and representation have posed a challenge to the field of industrial relations and generated significant rethinking of the future directions for this field of study. The article examines how well industrial relations meta-theories, when combined with efforts to build middle-range theories, provide distinctive explanations and different predictions for the alternatives that have emerged to date to fill the void. The authors propose new directions for theory and research that expand the range of actors or institutions that shape employment relations and include social identities outside of the employment relationship as the basis for mobilizing collective actions and voice. Finally, the authors suggest using these theoretical arguments to test among alternatives as a means of revitalizing and reshaping industrial relations as well as carrying forward the problem-solving norms that have characterized the field since its inception.

Read the article 'Mapping the frontier of theory in industrial relations: the contested role of worker representation' by Christian Lyhne Ibsen, Maite Tapia (Michigan State University) and Thomas A. Kochan (MIT Sloan School of Management).

Read SER's 20th Anniversary Virtual Special Issue

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