The paper examines industrial relations in the shipping industries of two Liberal Market Economies (LMEs), Australia and the United States and in two Coordinated Market Economies (CMEs), Germany and Denmark. Hall and Soskice?s (2001) theory of Liberal versus Coordinated market economies has been...

The paper examines industrial relations in the shipping industries of Australia and the United States. The two countries have to a considerable extent demonstrated polar approaches to the issue of reform in the context of 'globalisation' pressures. The extent to which local institutional factors...