Law, Corporate Governance and Partnerships at Work : A Study of Australian Regulatory Style and Business Practice

This new book, published by Ashgate, examines how businesses manage their labour systems, and particularly how they manage the complex interaction of various factors which give rise to instances of ‘partnership' style relations between businesses and their employees. The book draws from the literature concerning ‘Varieties of Capitalism' (VoC) and the different institutional and regulatory designs inherent in different types of political economy. The book is informed by an extensive set of empirical data constructed by the authors, which examines the activities of business corporations in Australia, their outlooks and relationships with stakeholders, and relates these to new and evolving theoretical frameworks based in political economy and law. The book places the Australian regulatory model within this international debate, and assesses the extent to which the system does or does not fit into the general categorisation created in the VoC literature.The chapters of the book are: 1. Corporate governance, employment systems and workplace partnerships in Australia. 2. Law and regulatory style in Australian corporate governance and employment systems. 3. Corporate governance and the management of labour: contemporary business practices in ten Australian companies. 4. Attitudes and outlooks of Australian company directors to stakeholders: the survey data. 5. The interaction of corporate governance and labour management in Australian companies: an analysis