Employment Research and State Traditions: A Comparative History of Britain, Germany, and the United States

Contemporary employment research tackles an increasingly globalized subject, much of it using empiricist and a-theoretical methods increasingly embedded in a market-economic paradigm. However, this stands in stark contrast to employment research’s historical roots.

Exploring these roots, Carola Frege traces how employment research was born out of the industrial and also democratic transformations of the 19th century and shows that the variations of employment research can be traced back to nation-specific state traditions. In particular, how countries conceptualized their relationship between political and industrial democracy, to what extent their labour movements were more state-oriented, and what influence the state had on the organization of higher education and scientific research, and shaped research topics, methods, theories, and paradigms.

The book argues that these different research cultures are still with us today, despite increasing globalization of the subject matter and growing internationalization of the academic world. Based on a comparative historical analysis of research characteristics in Britain, Germany, and the US, this book investigates how employment research developed in different ways in different countries. A longitudinal cross-country comparison of publications in the main journals of the field reveals that employment research is still deeply embedded in longstanding country-specific institutional and ideational traditions.

Frege makes the case for embracing this diversity, and rejuvenating the subject of employment research through a rediscovery of its policy-oriented research traditions, and a reinstatement of its relevance for society.

Carola Frege is Reader in Employment Relations of the Management Department at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She studied economics, business administration, and employment relations in Freiburg, Basel, and London. She has been an Associate Professor at Rutgers University and Visiting Professor at Cornell University and at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.

She is the author of Social Partnership at Work: Workplace Relations in Post-Unification Germany (Routledge, 1999) and co-editor of Varieties of Unionism: Comparative Strategies for Union Renewal (OUP, 2004). Her work on comparative employment relations has appeared in journals such as ndustrialRelations, British Journal of Industrial Relations, European Journal of Industrial Relations, German Politics and Society, Comparative Labor Law and Policy Journal. She is the forthcoming chief-editor of the British Journal of Industrial Relations.