An emerging body of literature has highlighted a gap in our understanding of the extent to which the salience attached to human rights is likely to influence the extent to which an individual takes account of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in decision making. The primary aim of this study is to begin to address this gap by understanding how individuals attribute different emphasis on specific aspects of human rights when making decisions to purchase, work, invest or support the community operations for socially responsible organisations. In order to achieve this objective, a survey instrument was administered to professionals in Russia and Bulgaria. Our data indicate that there is a significant correlation between individuals’ sensitivity towards different components of human rights and their perceptions of the importance of CSR in decision making. Specifically, the recognition of political rights was strongly associated with the willingness to purchase, invest, seek employment and support socially responsible firms. Our analysis also outlines significant differences between the Russian and the Bulgarian samples with regard to the manners in which individuals rate the importance of civil, political and economic human rights.

Scholars suggest that organizational diversity management (DM) programs are useful not only to satisfy legal requirements or social demands, but also to further the achievement of business objectives. However, much is still to be learned about the effects of such programs on individuals' perceptions of the organization. After reviewing the relevant literature on organization-level DM programs, I present a theoretical framework using recent literature that takes a strategic perspective on DM. This research classifies organization-sponsored DM programs into qualitatively different categories. Using the typology, I develop a model that proposes person-organization fit perceptions and attributions as mechanisms driving the relationship between DM programs and organizational attractiveness. I describe two experimental studies designed to test the proposed relationships between organizational diversity perspectives and applicants' perceptions of organizations. The first follows a two-phase between-subject design, while the second uses a within-subject policy-capturing methodology. Results, implications, and conclusions are discussed.

Collective bargaining and agreement-making has been an established part of Australia's arbitral model of industrial relations since its inception. Although the significance of bargaining and agreement-making has varied considerably over the course of the twentieth century and across different sectors, it nonetheless remained a secondary component of the formal system of wage determination until the 1980s. From the mid-1980s, however, new wage-fixing principles and legislative changes have paved the way for enterprise bargaining as the primary mechanism through which wages and conditions of employment have been determined, evolving towards a predominance of enterprise-level collective agreements. The aim of this paper is to describe the major institutional reforms intended to promote enterprise bargaining and to review the major trends in agreement-making over the course of the last twenty years in particular. The data show that, while enterprise-level agreement-making has become an entrenched feature of the Australian system, it is not at all clear that it has involved the spread of collective bargaining as the term is normally understood.

How relevant are human resource (HR) practices in economies undergoing significant economic transition from a command to a market-based system? Using data drawn from a large sample of Chinese establishments, the authors investigate the spread of a range of Western-style HR practices in China and estimate the relationship between the adoption of these practices and three organizational outcomes: sales per employee, total labor costs, and unit labor costs. They find a mixed result for the relationships between labor management practices and establishment productivity. While the introduction of a number of HR practices was also associated with significantly higher labor costs, the results indicate a more mixed result for the relationship between these practices and unit labor costs. Their findings further the understanding of the relationship between work practices and organizational outcomes, and they help clarify the effects of the changing economic context on HR management in China.

This article is part of a larger international investigation of the effects of a country's legal origins on the style of business regulation. We employ an innovative ‘leximetric’ methodology to numerically code the protective strength of Australian corporate law for both shareholder and creditor protection for the period 1970 to 2010. This leximetric methodology has been used in a prominent international debate concerning the development of legal rules and the effects of different styles of regulation on a range of economic outcomes—the legal origins debate. Drawing on similar data compiled by Armour, Deakin, Lele and Siems in five other countries (France, Germany, India, the UK and the US) for the period 1970 to 2005, we compare changes in the level of protection afforded to Australian shareholders and creditors with developments in other countries. Our analysis finds that in Australia there was a sustained upward trend in shareholder protection, but not in the case of creditor protection. Compared to the five other countries, the level of protection afforded to shareholders under Australian law was relatively high, and this was the case for the level of protection afforded to creditors as well. We also examine the extent of convergence and divergence in shareholder and creditor protection among the countries in the study. We find persistent divergence in shareholder protection, with the extent of divergence in 2005 similar to that in 1970. For creditor protection, we find increasing divergence among the countries over the period of study. Our findings are not supportive of legal origins theory.

A major question for the comparative analysis of industrial relations and labor market institutions has been the extent to which labor laws in different countries have converged or diverged over time. A second question is whether any convergence between labor law systems is associated with economic globalization. Using a new measure of the “protective strength” of a country’s labor market regulation (the Longitudinal Labor Regulation Index), this study compares the evolution of labor laws in six countries (Australia, France, Germany, India, the United Kingdom and the United States) for the period 1970 to 2005. We assess whether there has been a convergence in the protective strength of labor market regulation between these countries or ongoing divergences between them. In particular, we test whether there is evidence of “formal” or “functional” convergence, “weak” or “strong” convergence, “simple” or “bipolar” convergence, and whether convergence is associated with globalization and economic integration between the countries included in our study. Our analyses show that over the period from 1970 to the mid-1980s the protective strength of labor laws actually diverged, but began to converge thereafter. Although we find evidence of both formal and functional convergence during this later period, this propensity has been weak, and tended toward a pattern of “bipolar convergence.” At the same time, the data do not indicate that any of these processes of convergence were associated with an “Americanization” of labor law, or a race to the bottom.