First published in 1995. This volume offers a comparative perspective on labour relations and political change in eastern Europe within a common theoretical and empirical framework. Its coverage includes Bulgaria, and Czech and Slovak republics, Hungary, Poland, and Russia. Particular attention is given to the dynamics of changes in labour relations and privatisation, which are now critical to the more general process of political and economic transformation. This title will be of interest to scholars and students of politics, sociology and modern history.

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Since 1989, the postcommunist societies of Eastern Europe have been subject to policy advice and political and economic pressure which assumes that the development of 'free market' economies is the best route to economic growth and prosperity. The contributors to this volume take issue with this proposition. Though working from different theoretical perspectives, with different interests, they collectively argue that there are better ways to build dynamic and prosperous industrial economies in Eastern Europe than encouraging the respective societies of the region to ape the contents and swallow the myths of the Anglo-American form of capitalism. The contributors to this volume are among the leading authorities on economic transformation in Eastern Europe.

Changes in labour relations in Eastern Europe arising from recent political events can only be understood against an explanation of the existing structures and mechanisms of labour relations. This full-length collaborative study - the first in its field - analyses these structures and mechanisms by focusing on the radical reforms undertaken in Bulgaria over the last decade. Using a wealth of case studies, it looks at the action processes within enterprises and at the processes of strategy formulation on a national level in Bulgaria, and compares them with those processses in other Eastern European countries such as Yugoslavia and Hungary.

Why, given political freedom coupled with adverse economic change, has labour been so quiescent since the fall of communism in Eastern Europe? Through the use of case studies, this text explores the extent of these weaknesses and the relationship between labour and politcs in these countries.

This full-length collaborative study - the first in its field - analyses the existing structures and mechanisms of labour relations in Eastern Europe by focusing on the radical reforms undertaken in Bulgaria over the last decade.

There have been numerous accounts exploring the relationship between institutions and firm practices. However, much of this literature tends to be located into distinct theoretical-traditional 'silos', such as national business systems, social systems of production, regulation theory, or varieties of capitalism, with limited dialogue between different approaches to enhance understanding of institutional effects. Again, evaluations of the relationship between institutions and employment relations have tended to be of the broad-brushstroke nature, often founded on macro-data, and with only limited attention being accorded to internal diversity and details of actual practice. The Handbook aims to fill this gap by bringing together an assembly of comprehensive and high quality chapters to enable understanding of changes in employment relations since the early 1970s. Theoretically-based chapters attempt to link varieties of capitalism, business systems, and different modes of regulation to the specific practice of employment relations, and offer a truly comparative treatment of the subject, providing frameworks and empirical evidence for understanding trends in employment relations in different parts of the world. Most notably, the Handbook seeks to incorporate at a theoretical level regulationist accounts and recent work that link bounded internal systemic diversity with change, and, at an applied level, a greater emphasis on recent applied evidence, specifically dealing with the employment contract, its implementation, and related questions of work organization. It will be useful to academics and students of industrial relations, political economy, and management.

Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden today all enjoy a reputation for strong labour movements, which in turn are widely seen as part of a distinctive regional approach to politics, collective bargaining and welfare. But as this volume demonstrates, narratives of the so-called “Nordic model” can obscure the fact that experiences of work and the fortunes of organized labour have varied widely throughout the region and across different historical periods. Together, the essays collected here represent an ambitious intervention in labour historiography and European history, exploring themes such as work, unions, politics and migration from the early modern period to the twenty-first century.

Since the late 1980s the experiences of work and employment in the former communist world have been profoundly transformed. Work, Employment and Transition brings together a series of essays by leading international scholars which highlights the varied and complex forms that work and employment restructuring are taking in the post-soviet world, and makes important theoretical contributions to our understanding of these transformations.