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"This book argues that employers' organizations are resilient organizations that adapt to changing circumstances by developing new practices. Adaptation has been prompted by changing economic and social contexts, including state interventions and union activities. Contexts vary over time, across countries and world regions. The purpose of the book is to explore these variations and their impacts on employer organizations. The book covers the following themes across four book sections: theoretical perspectives on employer collective action; employers' organizations in different types of capitalism; different types of employers' organizations; and international and comparative employer interest representation. Theoretical explorations examining employer power, political preferences, meta-organizing and ideological foundations are complemented by studies of employers' organization in China, Denmark, Australia, Germany, Turkey, Canada, and the UK. Different types such as regional and international employers' organizations are also examined. The book is one of the few edited volumes to examine employer collective action within work and employment, and is the first since 1984 to consider western and non-western contexts. The book will be of interest to employment relations and sociology of work researchers, scholars, advanced students and practitioners as it brings new perspectives to an understudied actor in employment relations: employers' organizations."

This article examines union strategies towards the twin digital and green transitions, comparing the German and Belgian automotive industries. The drive towards net-zero and more digital economies is manifested through the move from fossil fuel-powered cars to electric cars, engendering a reorganisation of production, work and employment among car manufacturers. We identified two strategic union response patterns. While German unions are developing proactive strategies and proposals to influence and shape the ongoing transition of the automotive industry, Belgian unions are more passive, reacting primarily to management proposals and focusing narrowly on employment and working conditions without a broader strategy on how to influence the transformation of the automotive industry. We explain the observed cross-national differences by two factors: the importance of national institutions, i.e., the varying integration of labour into management decision-making, and the role of union knowledge regimes. The latter refers to internal union organisations and structures such as research departments, research institutes and foundations tasked with providing own research and funding external research on change topics from a union perspective, publishing studies and developing programmatic agendas, and disseminating the knowledge to union members through training, workshops and conferences.

This paper identifies four roles of contemporary European Employers' Organisations. European Employers' Organisations are lobbyists in Brussels that represent the interests of their members, seeking to influence institutions. European Employers' Organisations are reluctant social partners that engage with labour unions, though mostly with the aim to avoid binding regulation. European Employers' Organisations are service providers, amongst others informing members about EU legislative and programmatic developments. Finally, European Employers' Organisations are standard setters in Europe, focussing on voluntary, flexible norms and codes of conduct.

Purpose
Collective employer representation in the UK has changed in fundamental ways in recent decades. Collective bargaining has declined and instead, the authors have seen the emergence of a significant new form of collective organisation, the employer forum (EF), which promotes good corporate behaviour and typically focusses on issues of equality and diversity, social policy and community engagement. The purpose of this paper is to examine this new form of collective action through a case study on Business in the Community (BITC) Wales. It also compares this EF with traditional employers' associations (EAs) in order to establish what is significant and distinctive about EFs.


Design/methodology/approach
BITC Wales is a "typical case" (Patton, 2014; Seawright and Gerring, 2008) that shares key characteristics and functions with other EFs across key analytical dimensions, and therefore provides insights into the wider population of EFs in the UK. In addition, the paper compares EFs, examined through a qualitative case study of BITC Wales, and traditional EAs, introduced and discussed in the literature review, along the same analytical dimensions. The aim of contrasting EAs with the case study on BITC Wales is to establish what is distinctive and significant about EFs and to consider the implications for employment relations in the UK.


Findings
The paper argues that EFs and EAs support employers in dealing with the challenges of managing the employment relationship and threats to profitability in different political contexts. The organisation of employers in EAs was a response to increasing trade union power and labour costs. EFs are helping employers to deal with a different set of challenges, including declining social cohesion in communities in which employers operate, reputational and legal risks posed by new equality and diversity legislation and expectations of good corporate citizenship by consumers and their own employees. EFs address these challenges by engaging in social projects in local communities, by promoting good corporate behaviour through benchmarking and codes of conduct, and by boosting the reputation of employers through award schemes and promotion of corporate social responsibility activities of member companies.


Originality/value
Previous literature has not examined EFs and their role in employment relations. This paper considers EFs as a new actor in employment relations.

This article examines employers' organisations in the United Kingdom, drawing upon 70 interviews and a new dataset encompassing 447 employers' organisations. The article's contribution is to develop a new typology of employers' organisations capturing their organisational change in the wake of the decline of collective bargaining. It does this by drawing on a conceptualisation of employers' organisations as intermediary organisations before identifying four organisational types: lobbying, service, negotiating and standard-setting employers' organisations. The article also identifies and discusses factors that underlie this pattern of differentiation.

In this article we argue that International HRM research will benefit from an extended research agenda that moves: i) beyond the enterprise, ii) beyond managerialism, and iii) beyond universalism. This will require both a wider range of theoretical resources to be brought to bear and a greater attentiveness to the interpenetrating levels of the empirical worlds that are subject to evaluation and explanation. The article reflects on the opportunities for drawing on theoretical frameworks from proximate research areas and advances a multi-level approach in order to achieve a more holistic and situated understanding of HRM in its international and comparative contexts.