In March 2022, the first issue of the 2022 International Labor Relations Brief was published inside the CULR. The International Office of Cooperation and Exchange was responsible for selecting, editing and proofreading the articles, while the library was responsible for administrative coordination, journal binding and printing.
In 2021, the CULR decided to edit and publish the internal journal International Labor Relations Brief each year, selecting several well-known journals of international labor relations with higher impact factors as the sources, as well as tracking and translating labor relations research reports published by major international organizations. Each issue of the journal contains current hot topics of labor relations in China, and the translation of the full texts of academic papers with a high reference value, so that leaders of policy-makers, employees and employers, research personnel and university teachers can quickly understand the frontier issues, research paradigms, literature arguments, research conclusions and policy recommendations of the international academic community of labor relations, which facilitate deeper comparative research on relevant topics in China.
Concentrating on the theory, system and practice of labor relations, the first issue of the 2022 journal has selected and translated eight papers, which mainly include:
In the first part of labor relations theory, we translated the full texts of the two papers in the special issue, New Theories in Employment Relations, of the 2021 ILL Review of Cornell University. The first one is the New Directions in Employment Relations Theory: Understanding Fragmentation, Identity, and Legitimacy by Virginia Doellgast et al. Based on the summary of employment relations theory evolution, the authors elaborated on the impact of recent disruptive changes in the international economy and society upon the development of frontier theory. The second one is the Commentary on New Theories in Employment Relations, which collected brief commentaries on the new labor relations theory of a few outstanding scholars in this field. The third one is Mark Bray's The Many Meanings of Co-Operation in the Employment Relationship and Their Implications which discussed interesting topics of labor-management cooperation.
In the second part of labor relations of individuals, the translated paper, Zero Hours Contracts and Their Growth by Egidio Farina et al. studied the popularization of zero hours contracts (ZHCs) in the UK labor market and its nature.
In the third part of collective labor relations, the journal recommends the Productivity and Wage Effects of Firm-Level Collective Agreements: Evidence from Belgian Linked Panel Data by Andrea Garnero et al. that examined how firm-level collective agreements affect firm performance in a multi-level bargaining system.
In the fourth part of labor dispute resolution, this issue introduces three papers. The first one is Advancing Dispute Resolution by Understanding the Sources of Conflict: Toward an Integrated Framework by John Budd et al. where organizational leaders, public policymakers, dispute resolution professionals, and scholars have developed diverse methods for resolving workplace conflict. The second one is Systems for Conflict Resolution in Comparative Perspective by Martin Behrens et al., who examined systemic differences in the manifestation and management of workplace conflict, and sought to fill this void by analyzing through a comparative lens the practices for addressing employment-related conflict in four countries: Germany, the United States, Italy, and Australia. The third one is Organizational Conflict Resolution and Strategic Choice: Evidence from a Survey of Fortune 1000 Firms by David Lipsky et al., who examined the strategic underpinnings of firms' use of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) practices.
The world is experiencing profound shifts unseen in a century with an increasingly complex international environment and significant increases in instability and uncertainty. In the economic sector, a new round of layout arrangement of the global industrial chain has started and the fourth industrial revolution and the growth of the digital economy are driving profound industrial structural upgrading and economic structural adjustment. In such a context, labor relations are facing unprecedented upheavals and challenges. As Professor Bruce Kaufman said, the most critical task in this field is to propose a macro-level theory of large-scale collaborative output of labor relations and the micro-level theory of labor relations system, which will serve as the pillars of theoretical development of the domain. Although China has different national conditions and development stages, we can still draw inspiration from the above-mentioned papers to further explore the path to harmonious labor relations with Chinese characteristics.
(International Office of Cooperation and Exchange)