This paper compares responses to crises through analysis of labour market policy in Sweden and the UK between the Global Financial Crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic. In drawing on 'restructuring regimes', we offer insights into the dynamics of change in the two countries, focussing on the development of short-time working schemes. We argue that Sweden learned lessons from the GFC that helped prepare for future crises, whereas the UK's muted response left it ill-prepared for the COVID-19 crisis. The paper contributes to debates around restructuring regimes through an analysis of the journey between two crises in which we characterise Sweden's approach as proactive and pre-emptive and the UK's as reactive and ad hoc. By locating analysis in traditions of self-regulation and voluntarism in Sweden and the UK, respectively, we expand upon the role that industrial relations play in maintaining the stability, or not, of national restructuring regimes.

Purpose The aim of this paper is twofold. First, to understand the degree to which the intended outcomes of Saudi's Nitaqat labour market policy corresponds to the actual responses from private companies. Second, to investigate how these gaps between policy intentions and actual outcomes have informed recent changes to Nitaqat policy. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a qualitative approach with a case study design and thematic analysis procedures. Data were obtained from the following three sources: semi-structured interviews completed during the early stage of Nitaqat in 2013-2014 with nine policymakers and 44 key stakeholders from six private Saudi companies; policy documents and gray literature on the aims and effects of the Nitaqat program; and available peer-reviewed literature on the subject. Findings This paper sets out and analyses the following four main goals of Nitaqat: First, to increase the Saudi national employment rate, second, increase company efficiency, third, improve human resource capabilities, and fourth, increase female labour participation. This paper reveals that although Nitaqat has certainly resulted in a positive change in some of these areas, in other areas, there remain gaps between the intentions and the actual effects of Nitaqat. This paper analyses recent changes to Nitaqat and argues that further changes may be needed to achieve the full goals of Nitaqat. Originality/value This paper's originality lies in its analysis of the aims of labour market policies and organisational responses. It highlights the reasons for disconnections between the policy aims and organisational practices and explores how policymakers react and respond to these implementation gaps.

Purpose – State-led initiatives in Saudi Arabia have focused on ‘localisation’, a term, which here istaken to mean a state-led process to increase employment of workers from the local labour market,and displace workers from other countries. In Saudi Arabia, the ‘Nitaqat’ regulations in 2011 requiredprivate sector firms to recruit more Saudi nationals, limiting their access to the non-Saudi labourmarket, and penalising firms that did not comply. To cope with these staffing requirements, firmshave been incentivised to upgrade their approaches to HRM. Drawing on the concept of DynamicCapabilities, this study examines the development and use of human resource capabilities shortly afterthese regulations were implemented.

Aim – To understand the role of operational and dynamic HR capabilities in organisations’ abilitiesto manage external change.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses a case study design and drew on both primaryand secondary data collected in 2013-2014. Data were 17 primary semi-structured interviews with keydecision makers of three private firms, and secondary government documentation on Nitaqat wereanalysed by means of a content analysis approach.

Findings – The present research reveals that HRM capabilities do not automatically lead to innovationor successful adaptation to external change, but rather, outcomes depend on how HR strategiesinteract with, and are shaped by other contextual, environmental factors.

Limitations of the study – The study is limited by its relatively small number of cases, and focus ona single country context.

Practical implications – The results may bring awareness as to the role of socio-cultural context inoperational and dynamic HR capabilities and this knowledge can benefit companies that face similarexternal pressures in the successful development of their capabilities.

Originality/value – The originality of the paper lies in its detailed consideration of how HRcapabilities shape, enable and constrain strategic choices during external change. It also points to thevital importance of sociocultural context in understanding how firms navigate change, with the useof HR capabilities being shaped considerably by this context

While post-2004 Polish labour migration to the UK was underpinned by diasporic spaces instrumental in facilitating social and labour market adjustments, the institutions of the host society such as trade unions also sought to establish links with migrants. The analysis of interactions between UK unions and EU migrants focused on organising strategies and specific provisions such as English language learning. However, the discussion tended to ignore the impacts of diasporic influences, from ethnicity and native languages of migrants to the outcomes of migrant worker organising. Drawing on ethnographic and qualitative data, this paper discusses how Polishness, in its ethnic, historic and linguistic manifestations, has affected the internal dynamics of a migrant worker organisation created by a major UK trade union. The explicit acknowledgement of diasporic particularities of post-2004 Polish migrants not only enabled labour organising activities but also shaped the migrant worker organisation from within. The strength of diasporic influences on one hand and the chosen form of union organising on the other created conditions for the development of diasporic spaces within the institution of the host society.

European Union (EU) enlargement in 2004 produced a multi-layered regulatory space structuring labour mobility between Central Eastern Europe and the United Kingdom. Building on a critical revaluation of the concept of labour mobility power as a phenomenon that cannot be reduced to earnings' maximisation, the paper contends that although post-2004 migration was nested in the macro-regulatory mechanism of EU freedom of movement of labour, kinship and ethnic networks constituted additional layers in regulating migrants' mobility trajectories. Drawing on migratory biographies, the analysis examines how these regulatory mechanisms shaped migrants' actions and intentions related to transnational exit, contributed in creating linkages through which migrants sought to actualise their labour power on a transnational scale, and provided directions for labour mobility power's use within the receiving country. By embedding labour mobility power within kinship (micro) and ethnic (meso) networks, this paper offers a complimentary understanding of labour mobility power that takes it beyond the homo economicus explanatory model.

This multi-method case explores how change in HRM implementation can impact performance metrics in a recessionary climate. Qualitative HR outcome data are mapped against financial metrics to explore adoption of hard-line HRM practices in a major UK retailer. Despite record profits throughout the recession, the organisation responded strategically to worsening conditions in the labour market, firstly to maintain operational flexibility, but then to opportunistically enlarge jobs and intensify work to help achieve immediate gains in financial metrics, including a gain of 37 per cent in profit per employee over 3 years. These gains were achieved by derailing commitment-based approaches to HRM, pointing towards the vulnerability of soft HRM systems during times of austerity or retrenchment.

This paper provides a nuanced insight into the workplace level interactions between a union and HRM systems within a union-management partnership arrangement. Soft outcomes of HRM systems typically suffer from compromised implementation by managers struggling to balance competing operational priorities, but we show how a union limits this poor implementation. Qualitative and documentary data were retrieved from a major UK retailer and a trade union to examine how union activity interacts with HRM delivery. Firstly, union communication systems enhanced or replaced company systems of employee voice. Secondly, union activity policed management implementation of HRM practices to limit their subjugation to short-term productivity increases, improving outcomes for employees and the HRM system for the company. These outcomes were achieved through oppositional engagement within the context of partnership, which points towards a persisting and productive pluralism within the cooperative rhetoric.

This chapter examines employer strategies in relation to migration. Drawing on literature within migration studies, HRM, employment relations and the sociology of work, it situates and explore the actions and strategies of one individual actor - the employer - within broader frameworks of regulation and migration governance and recognising the interactions between employers and other actors in the employment relationship. The chapter examines various aspects of research developed to investigate the relation between labour migration and employers, exploring the role of employer associations in shaping labour market regulations, the role of labour market intermediaries both in their capacity as employers and recruiters of migrant labour, and employers’ strategies in relation to refugees. The chapter argues for the need for a multi-level, multi-actor approach to provide a nuanced understanding of the complex ways that employer strategies and migration are related. © Guglielmo Meardi 2024.

This paper explores questions of labour reproduction and skill development under different contract arrangements within the UK construction and civil engineering industry. The central concerns of the paper relate to the ways in which skills shortages within the sector have impacted upon recruitment practices, training provision and the use of contract alternatives in terms of both direct and non-standard labour. The argument primarily draws upon data from a national postal survey conducted in 2002, covering firms of all sizes within this key economic sector. The paper reveals some interesting findings regarding recruitment and training practices, which despite some encouraging headline figures on the existence of training reveals an over dependency on contingent labour and low levels of apprenticeships particularly amongst the numerically dominant small firms. This suggests that the recognised problems of labour shortages within the sector are ongoing and the aim of attracting new workers into the industry remains unrealised.

There has been long-standing interest in issues around the nature of employment in construction. Historically, high levels of contingent labour use in the sector, including the use of subcontractors, agency workers and self-employed workers, have led to debate over the linkages between casualisation and labour reproduction. Recent skills shortages and recruitment difficulties in the sector have intensified this debate further. This chapter examines the relationship between recruitment difficulties, the use of contingent labour and skills reproduction in the construction sector. Drawing on results from an original survey of construction employers conducted in 2002, the chapter examines recruitment difficulties among construction employers, their responses to these difficulties and their use of contingent labour. The chapter also examines the relationship between contingent labour and training. The results of the survey point to overall labour shortages in the construction sector, regardless of contract type, and suggest that further casualisation of the employment relationship and the increased use of contingent labour in the UK construction industry offer no long-term solution to labour and skills shortages in the sector.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore the implications for HRM of employers’ use of migrants in low-skilled work in a UK-based firm. Is the use of migrant workers for low skilled work associated with "soft" or "hard" approaches to HRM? How do employers recruit migrant workers? What career progression paths are available to these workers in firms? What are the expectations and aspirations of migrant workers? Design/methodology/approach - The paper examines these issues through a case study of a UK-based employer using large numbers of migrant workers. The paper draws on data from a survey of migrant workers in the firm conducted in 2006, and from interviews with managers and migrant workers within this firm, conducted between 2005 and 2006. Findings - The paper highlights the "hard" HRM strategy pursued by the company in order to maintain a competitive advantage based on low labour costs and substitutability of workers. A contradiction is noted between the desire of the firm to retain migrant workers with a strong work ethic and gain high commitment, on the one hand, and their continued attempt to compete on the basis on minimal labour costs and follow a "hard" approach to HRM, on the other. Practical implications - The paper points to the importance of analysis of employers’ use of migrants and the strategies they are adopting towards using these workers. Developing an understanding of these strategies is critical to understanding the social and economic experiences of migrant workers. Originality/value - The paper combines qualitative and quantitative research through an intensive case study to illuminate the implications for HRM of employers’ use of migrants in low-skilled jobs. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of contingent labour in the construction and civil engineering sector in the UK. Design/methodology/approach - The paper presents the findings of a national postal survey of employment practices within the UK construction and civil engineering sector. The survey was conducted in 2002 and covered firms of all sizes within the sector. This technique has been supplemented with in-depth interviews to provide a deeper understanding of the issues raised. Findings - The paper finds that employers’ use of contingent labour is widespread and that in many cases, the use of contingent labour has increased over recent years. It is argued that recourse to the use of contingent labour may increasingly be a constrained choice for employers, reflecting overall labour shortages and recruitment difficulties in the sector. The paper also finds that the use of contingent labour contributes to skills shortages in the industry, with the scope of training offered to workers on these contract forms being limited in nature. Originality/value - The paper reveals the complex relationship between the use of contingent labour and ongoing skills shortages in the sector. The paper concludes that the cycle of turning to contingent labour in response to recruitment difficulties does not replenish the skill profile of the sector and therefore offers no long-term solution to the skills shortages within the construction industry. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

This article examines the connections between employment agencies, ethics and migrant workers. The article identifies three approaches adopted by agencies towards ethics and migrant workers, namely, ‘business case’, ‘minimal compliance’ and ‘social justice’ approaches. Through case studies of three agencies in the UK, the article explores the potential and limitations of each of these approaches for meeting the needs of migrant workers. The article points to the limitations of both the business case and ‘minimal compliance’ approaches, stemming from tensions between the attempt to put in place ethical approaches towards the employment of migrant workers and the imperatives of the competitive strategies being pursued by agencies. The article points to the potential for social enterprise agencies to effectively meet the needs of migrants. These agencies can focus on more than just the first transition of migrants into the labour market; can formalize transitions within the labour market and link people to jobs that are more appropriate to their skills and experience, as a means of preventing the perpetuation of skill underutilisation.

This article looks at the relationship between employment agencies and migration. The connections between employment agencies and migrants have long been recognized. However, many have suggested that the relationship between agencies and migrants is changing. Drawing on four research studies by the authors, conducted between 2005 and 2012, the article looks at three key issues: the use of employment agencies by migrants; the strategies of employment agencies towards migrants; and the outcomes for migrants associated with working through employment agencies. The article finds that agencies are adapting their strategies towards migrants, but that the outcomes of these strategies are often negative for migrants.

There has been widespread interest across various national contexts in employers’ use of contingent forms of labour. The tendency to conflate different contract types into catch-all categories has increasingly given way to recognition of the differences between forms of labour. Despite this, systematic comparisons of employers’ attitudes to different forms of labour remain an underdeveloped area of research. Drawing on an original survey of the UK construction sector this paper offers new insight into employers’ attitudes to different forms of contingent labour and tracks changes in their use. Uniquely, the analysis of movement between different forms of labour goes beyond approaches that focus on the dichotomy between direct and contingent labour to trace a more complex pattern of movement between the different contingent forms. This more nuanced picture of changing patterns of employers’ use of contingent labour suggests an area for development in future research. © Industrial Relations Society of Australia SAGE Publications Ltd.

This article investigates the process of moving on from redundancy in the Welsh steel industry among individuals seeking new careers. It identifies a spectrum of career change experience, ranging from those who had actively planned their career change, prior to the redundancies, to those ’at a career crossroads’, for whom there were tensions between future projects, present contingencies and past identities. It suggests that the process of moving on from redundancy can be better understood if we are able to identify, not just structural and cultural enablers and constraints but also the temporal dimensions of agency that facilitate or limit transformative action in the context of critical life events. Where individuals are located on the spectrum of career change experience will depend on the balance of enabling and constraining factors across the four aspects considered, namely temporal dimensions of agency, individuals’ biographical experience, structural and cultural contexts.

Set in the context of the Swedish state’s agenda of dual emancipation for women and men, the article shows how a global ICT consultancy company’s formal gender equality goal is undermined by competing demands. Employing the concept of availability, in preference to work–life balance, the research found women opted out of roles requiring high degrees of spatial and temporal availability for work, in favour of roles more easily combined with family responsibilities. Such choices led to poor career development, plus the loss of technological expertise and confidence.These outcomes were at odds with the company’s gender equality aims, as well as government objectives to make it easier for women and men to combine work and family, and increase the number of women within ICT.

When people are at work they are expected to work and not spend time on other things. But people do not engage exclusively in work; they also engage in a variety of non-work related activities, which Eddy et al. (2010) choose to term ‘personal activities on company time’ or PACT. What personal activities people engage in is determined by what they consider urgent in one way or another, and what is possible to do at the specific workplace (Ivarsson & Larsson, forthcoming). So far, most studies on this subject have focused on subordinated personnel (Lim 2002) but mid- and top-level managers also engage in PACT (Schou Andreassen et al. 2014; Ivarsson & Larsson 2015). However, management attitudes to PACT vary significantly between their own activities and the behaviour of their subordinates. Based on in-depth interviews with 20 high-level managers from different sectors and industries in Sweden, the paper explores the differences in attitude and presentation of PACT.

We explore the incidence and rationale presented for respective actions of workers and managers,    which betrays an underlying moralising theme around work ethics that echoes back through the historic concerns of the Labour Process debate. Since the days of Taylor (1911), management have moralized about the personality and the attitude among workers – their inherited laziness and their never-ending tendency to ‘soldier’ – which has led to a perceived need to keep on monitoring and controlling employees by various means. Employees who, in one way or another, withholds working capacity – for example by engagement in some non-work related activity – are believed to cause financial loss for the organization (Self & Self 2014) and are also believed to influence overall work ethic in a negative way (Kamp & Brooks 1991).

From the data, managers engage quite extensively in personal activities on official work time. Even though employees and managers may have similar reasons for engagement in personal activities, the managers believe that there is a big difference between the two.  The managers’ general perception is that work time should be devoted only to work. They do not approve when an employee engage in any other activity than work; to engage is PACT is presented as “stealing” time, and indicative of a flawed work ethic. Nevertheless, when managers themselves engage quite extensively in personal activities on official work time, this is presented as a benefit of an inherently good work ethic, or “borrowing” time based on a capacity for compensatory calculation. Even in cases where a narrow band of legitimate PACT activities for workers were tolerated, this compared to managements’ lack of need to justify their engagement in a near limitless range of non-work activities. There has been a lot of focus on blurring of work and non-work roles for managers and the need for boundary management (Rothbard et al, 2005). The managers in this study presented the inversion of this logic with the assumption of a lack of competing needs for non-managerial workers and any blurring of the boundary being regarded as “soldiering”.

The concept of regulation is central to industrial relations. Deregulation, re-regulation and the transfer of regulatory responsibilities have characterised five decades of reform projects. The concepts of negotiated' change and colonisation' are engaged as ways of understanding key moments of regulatory change in UK industrial relations since the 1960s. The stigmatising and undermining of trade unionism has been a key theme in modern British industrial relations. This paper explores five features of the way in which the regulatory spaces of industrial relations were colonised once the project of formalisation failed: strategies of marginalisation, strategies of containment, strategies of voice and legitimacy, the development of new expert knowledge and the rise of new actors and boundaries.

The perceived displacement of bureaucracy by external market relationships through the use of subcontracting has brought about an increase in interest in inter-organizational relations. The development of such relationships can be a protracted process, characterized by tensions and contradictions. The article traces the development of subcontracting within Eircom, the Irish telecommunications provider, from its relatively ad hoc origins in the mid-1990s to the development of a far more sophisticated contracting regime by 2003. The article explores the relationship between internal and external organizational changes associated with the construction of the subcontracting regime and the development of inter-organizational relationships. The subcontracting regime was transformed from a reliance on a series of decentralized local networks of suppliers to a highly centralized arrangement that bore increasing semblance to a unitary hierarchy. The transactions costs implications of such developments are considered throughout. The dynamics of change in this case reflect an incremental learning process as the organization adapted to changes in its environment and the emergent limitations of existing practices. Trust played an important role in the mediation of the subcontract relationships; however, the development of trust-based relationships was not a linear process. © 2008 SAGE Publications.

This is a case study of the use of subcontracting within BT plc the UK’s largest telecommunications firm. The 1990s have witnessed significant quantitative and qualitative changes in the utilisation and management of subcontracting within BT. The deregulation, or rather the shift in regulation, of the employment relationship represented by movement from bureaucratic hierarchical forms of organisation to subcontracting introduces several sources of uncertainty into the process of ensuring an adequate supply of labour and inducing the desired contribution within production. This study examines whether the regulation of labour in terms of supply and performance can be reconciled through subcontracting mechanisms. In this case the experience of deregulation of the capital-labour relationship threw up unforeseen outcomes. The problems that arose from the reliance upon a labour source that was ostensibly beyond the control of the firm inspired initiatives that essentially represented the partial reregulation of the capital-labour relationship.

This is a study of the reconfiguration of bureaucracy based on a case study of subcontracting within BT plc, the UK’s largest telecommunications firm. The 1990s witnessed significant quantitative and qualitative changes n the utilization and management of subcontracting. The expansion in the use of subcontractors in this period was paralleled by reforms to the processes of negotiating, administrating and monitoring contracts. This article traces these developments and analyses their implications. The continuing process of reform saw a significant redrawing of the boundaries of responsibility between the patron firm and its supplier, as discrete elements of the production process were transferred to the remit of subcontractors, This migration of responsibility was, however, predicated upon the exportation of bureaucracy, from the patron to the supplier; the relocation of the bureaucratic mechanisms appropriate to the management of the widening range of tasks, The movement towards an increased reliance on external sources of labour could ostensibly bring greater exposure to market imperatives, but it is argued that, contrary to me theme of dismantling hierarchical employment structures, these reforms represented the reconfiguration of the bureaucratic organization of production.

This article explores union responses to subcontracting in the context of the Irish telecommunications sector. Through a longitudinal case study the development of strategy is traced over a number of years as the union moved away from a policy of exclusion towards one of engagement. As the findings show, a three-tiered approach brought successes in terms of the retention and recruitment of workers on non-standard contracts. Yet this brought tensions over the role of the union in the regulation of the subcontracting process. © The Author(s), 2009.

The restructuring of Irish telecommunications brought major changes to employment in the sector, including increased use of contingent labour. The Communications Workers Union won bargaining recognition in the main subcontract supply firm.The recruitment of contingent workers brought new challenges in terms of reconciling the interests of members working on traditional employment contracts and those with a variety of contingent employment forms. Successful organizing campaigns also raised the questions: why do contingent workers join the union and what does union membership mean to them? These developments are set in the context of union responses to sectoral restructuring in other countries, and possible lessons are drawn for broader attempts by unions to recruit and represent contingent workers.

This chapter discusses the nature and significance of kinship and community networks for the nature, structure and dynamics of labour, work and employment. It uses the lens of migration to explore these issues. Migration is but one of a number of arenas through which the importance of kinship and community networks to labour, work and employment dynamics can be explored. Our focus on migration reflects its historical and contemporary importance to debates around kinship and community networks. The key argument advanced in this chapter is that in the face of constrained opportunities existing in local labour markets, kinship and community networks can be used as mechanisms that may offer a means to improve the experience of migrants, on one hand, and as resources necessary to sustain diverse social activities on the other.

The article examines the attitudes and strategies of a UK based employer as they developed their use of migrant labour in the latest manifestation of a strategy that targeted groups of vulnerable workers with lower labour market power. Management’s celebration of the ’good worker’, based on the stereotyping of the perceived attributes of immigrant employees, resonated with the ’business case’ and ’resource based view’ debates within the human resource management literature.Yet terms and conditions of employment remained wedded to the bottom of the labour market. The article integrates analysis of the attitudes of employers with the views, experiences and aspirations of migrant workers. Micro level processes are also located in a wider analytical framework, incorporating the broader socio-economic context and key moments of regulatory intervention.

This article examines the role of support mechanisms for new migrant communities provided by networks of statutory, third-sector and refugee community organisations. The article explores the dynamics of the relationships between support groups, with analysis located in the urban context of NorthTown. The findings point to the possibility of tension between migrant support groups where there is a perceived need to compete over resources or political influence. Moreover, it is argued that there is a risk that institutional goals of organisational sustainability may take precedence over substantive goals of support provision. The ability of support groups to assert agency in terms of strategic responses to structural constraints on sustainability is explored. It is argued that an organising logic based on the creation of a political community within the new migrant population can prove more sustainable than contingent communities based on commonalities of language or nationality.

This article examines the role of support mechanisms for new migrant communities provided by networks of statutory, third sector and refugee community organisations. The article explores the dynamics of the relationships between support groups, with analysis located in the urban context of NorthTown. The findings point to the possibility of tension between migrant support groups where there is a perceived need to compete over resources or political influence.  Moreover, it is argued that there is a risk that institutional goals of organisational sustainability may take precedence over substantive goals of support provision. The ability of support groups to assert agency in terms of strategic responses to structural constraints on sustainability is explored. It is argued that an organising logic based on the creation of a political community within the new migrant population can prove more sustainable than contingent communities based on commonalities of language or nationality.

This article explores the use of contingent forms of employment in two diverse country contexts—the UK and Sweden—and investigates the influence of changing regulatory and economic conditions over a period that covers the current economic downturn. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data for the construction sector, the article addresses three questions. How do employers balance their flexibility preferences in the context of regulatory constraints? How has the global recession influenced employer behaviour? And to what extent can the Swedish experience be explained by convergence on other country models? While the UK employment model encourages employers to externalise the risk of unpredictable market conditions through the use of contingent contracts, the more supportive welfare regime in Sweden underpins a resilient preference of employers for open-ended employment contracts. Ongoing changes in labour market regulation pose challenges to the strongly regulated Swedish model, yet we find only a shared direction of travel with the UK rather than convergence in the use of contingent employment.

The article argues that any discussion of regulatory change should be sensitive to the manner in which regulation was originally constructed and developed. Any change can only be understood by a mapping of the complex interrelation of spaces, spheres and actors of regulation. The act of regulatory change requires shifts and re-alignments across a wide range of fronts. This is because regulation involves alliances and linkages across a range of spaces and actors, contingent upon the peculiarities and limits of different states and their respective civil societies.The manner in which regulatory change may be prosecuted also belies any notion of unproblematic transfer of responsibilities between actors. Copyright © 2005 BSA Publications Ltd®.

The debate on migration has extended the scope of industrial relations research and brought questions of regulation to the centre. We suggest that there is a mutuality to the relationship between the debates around migration and regulation within the industrial relations literature: the study of migration has stimulated a new set of debates within industrial relations that allow us to reconsider issues of regulation; in turn, the study of regulation offers a useful perspective on issues relating to migration. The article applies an analytical framework based on the interplay of regulatory spaces and actors to the study of international migration. The framework offers a dynamic approach to mapping the wide range of actors involved in the regulation of migration and the boundaries between regulatory spaces, which may be fluid and contested. Through applying this framework, industrial relations issues relating to migration are located within a wider view of both regulation and the international movement of people.

The article examines the relationship between restructuring and work-based identity among older workers, exploring occupational identity, occupational community and their roles in navigating transitions in the life course. Based on working-life biographical interviews with late career and retired telecoms engineers, the article explores the role of occupational identity in dealing with change prior to and following the end of careers at BT, the UK’s national telecommunications provider. Restructuring and perpetual organizational change undermined key aspects of the engineering occupational identity, inspiring many to seek alternative employment outside BT. For older workers, some seeking bridge employment in the transition to retirement, the occupational community not only served as a mechanism for finding work but also provided a sustained collective identity resource. Distinctively, the research points to a dialectical relationship between occupational identity and the navigation of change as opposed to the former simply facilitating the latter. 

This article explores the relationship between technology and occupational identity based on working-life biographical interviews with older telecommunications engineers. In the construction of their own working-life biographical narratives, participants attached great importance to the technology with which they worked. The article contends that workers’ relationship with technology can be more nuanced than either the sociology of technology literature or the sociology of work literature accommodates. Adopting the concept of affordances, it is argued that the physical nature of earlier electromechanical technology afforded engineers the opportunity to ‘fix’ things through the skilled application of tools and act as autonomous custodians of ‘living’ machines: factors that were inherent to their occupational identity. However, the change to digital technology denied the affordances to apply hands-on skill and undermined key elements of the engineering occupational identity. Rather than simply reflecting the nostalgic romanticizing of the past, the biographies captured deterioration in the material realities of work.

Despite the impact of neo-liberal agendas, the issue of regulation remains central to our understanding of economic processes, and particularly employment. The concept of regulation is often reduced to a narrowly defined set of functions performed by the state. However, processes of regulation involve a much wider range of sites and actors, within and beyond the boundaries of the state. This paper presents a framework for the analysis of the panoply of regulatory actors and the complex relations between them, including the shifting boundaries between regulatory spaces. The paper concludes with some illustrative examples of shifting regulatory structures within Sweden.

This article explores the phenomenon of recurrent internal redeployment, through a case study of restructuring at a UK based steel firm. While redeployment reflected one of the key functions of the traditional internal labour market at SteelCo, frequent restructuring events meant some workers experienced redeployment on a recurrent basis. For these workers the experience of repeated redeployment was analogous to churning in and out of jobs on the external labour market. Adapting this term to internal organisational processes, the article presents a new way of analysing recurrent redeployment through the formulation of the concept of Internal Labour Market Churn. This new contribution to internal labour market theory highlights problems with human capital development, career progression and in-work insecurity associated with internal churning, which tarnishes the sense of mutual commitment traditionally associated with and engendered by internal labour markets.

This article examines different orientations to planning in the context of the post-redundancy transition of workers in the Swedish steel industry. The aim of the article is to extend our understanding of the role of planning in careers transitions. Drawing on careers transitions theories, the article explores the qualitative experience of the journey between a redundancy event and the employment situation several years later. Within the careers literature planning is regarded as important to transitions, yet there is a tendency to present planning as an ongoing and lifelong process. By going beyond the prevalent focus within the career literature on managerial, professional or creative industries workers, the article raises the question of whether highly agential, ongoing, lifelong approaches to planning apply to everyone. Data are based on working-life biographical interviews conducted several years after redundancy. The findings show that although some participants resembled assumptions within the careers literature, there are key variations relating to ongoing planning, reflecting differences in the expectations of agency and perceptions of structural constraint. The analysis identifies three orientations to planning - strategic, episodic and truncated - and explores these in relation to both post-redundancy transition outcomes and, crucially, the experience of the transition journey.

This paper explores the importance of class andcollectivism to personal identity, and the role this played during a period ofpersonal and collective crisis created by mass redundancy in the Welsh steelindustry. The research findings demonstrate the importance of occupationalidentity to individual and collective identity formation. The apparent desireto maintain this collective identity acted as a form of resistance to theincreased individualisation of the post-redundancy experience, but rather thanleading to excessive particularism, it served as mechanism through which classbased thinking and class identity were articulated. It is argued that thecontinued concern for class identity reflected efforts to avoid submergence inan existence akin to Beck’s (1992) vision of a class-free ‘individualisedsociety of employees’. These findings therefore challenge the notion of thepervasiveness of individualism and the dismissal of class and collectiveorientations as important influences on identity formation.