Suchergebnisse

This volume features essays on labour relations at national, local, and workplace levels, as economic and political actors cope with the similar challenges associated with economic adjustment measures and the impact of 'globalization'.

While acknowledging the many forms and contributions of multi-method research (MMR), we examine the costs of treating it as best practice on the grounds that it reduces method-specific weaknesses and increases external validity for findings. Focusing on MMR that combines some type of qualitative analysis with statistical or formal approaches, we demonstrate that error-reduction and cross-validation are not feasible where methods are not sufficiently similar in their basic ontologies and their conceptions of causality. In such cases, MMR may still yield important benefits—such as uncovering related insights or improving the coding of variables—but these can be readily obtained through collaboration among scholars specializing in single-method research (SMR). Such scholars often set the standards for the application of particular methods and produce distinctive insights that can elude researchers concerned about competently deploying different methods and producing coherent findings. Thus, the unchecked proliferation of multi-method skill sets risks forefeiting the benefits of SMR and marginalizing idiographically-oriented qualitative research that fits less well with formal or quantitative approaches. This would effectively subvert the pluralism that once gave impetus to MMR unless disciplinary expectations and professional rewards are predicated on a more balanced and nuanced understanding of what various forms of SMR and MMR bring to the table.

Recent scholarship in political science attests to the rapid proliferation of approaches engaged in multi-method research (MMR), research that employs two or more methods selected from an array of qualitative, quantitative, and formal methods typically used in the social sciences. The general notion that different types of methods can be employed to advance or test a particular theory is not in itself new. Multi-method approaches have long been a feature of social science research, taken up usually out of necessity (e.g. Jick 1979). Where data conducive to one method was not available, scholars would turn to another in order to fill the gap.

This study aims to generate fresh hypotheses concerning emergent variations in labor politics across postcommunist settings. Although labor may be weak throughout the postcommunist world, a historical comparison of labor politics in Russia & China reveals consequential differences in the extent & sources of union weakness. Taking these differences seriously, the study asks why organized labor in Russia -- in spite of a steeper decline in union membership, greater fragmentation, & a conspicuously low level of militancy -- was relatively more effective in advancing working-class interests during economic liberalization than the growing, organizationally unified trade union apparatus in China. The comparisons suggest that some constraints on organized labor are more malleable than others, allowing for openings where labor can affect outcomes in ways that surprise, if not scare, state & business. Specifically, key differences in historical legacies & in the pace & dynamics of institutional transformation have conferred upon Russian unions key organizational, material, & symbolic resources that Chinese unions do not possess to the same degree. These differences reflect mechanisms capable of generating increasingly divergent prospects for organized labor mobilization over long-time horizons. Adapted from the source document.