Three essays on labor-management relationships in the changing world of work

Are labor-management relationships relevant to today’s changing world of work? Three chapters in this dissertation address this question by studying the role of labor-management relationships in organizational flexibility and innovation—two essential components for organizational success. The first chapter examines how unions react to employers’ attempts to increase labor flexibility, known as employment externalization. This chapter suggests that cooperative union-management relationships mitigate externalization, whereas conflictual relationships strengthen unions' resistance to both types of externalization. In the second chapter, I argue that labor-management cooperation can counteract the power of short-term-oriented shareholders. And such cooperation can promote a more balanced approach to decision-making that considers various stakeholders of organizations. In the third chapter, I discover that worker representatives and high-performance work systems can work in a synergetic way when worker representatives can meaningfully participate in managerial decision-making processes. For empirical evidence, I use the Workplace Panel Survey from South Korea, covering the period from 2005 to 2019, to provide a comprehensive understanding of the complex interactions between labor and management and their influence on organizational outcomes. Overall, my dissertation makes a case for the continuing relevance and importance of labor-management relationships in the evolving world of work.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Human Res & Industrial Rels

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2023

Author dc:creator

• Kim, Ki-Jung

Contributors dc:contributor

• Benton, Richard
• Lamare, Ryan
• Jung, Jiwook
• Riordan, Christine

• Labor-management Relationships
• Employment Externalization
• Unions
• Innovation
• Industrial Relations Climate
• Employment Relations

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2023 Ki-Jung Kim

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/120092

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F120092