Social scientists have sketched four distinct theories to explain a phenomenon that appears to have ramped up in recent years, the diffusion of policies across countries. Constructivists trace policy norms to expert epistemic communities and international organizations, who define economic...

Until the late 1950s, companies in both the North and the South practiced discrimination openly. Women, African-Americans, and Latinos were rarely given opportunities to work alongside white men in the same jobs. They were generally offered unskilled jobs without promotion prospects. Most unions...

Determined to figure out whether there is any hope for service-sector workers caught in the downward spiral of deskilling, declining wages, deunionization, outsourcing, and job insecurity, Virginia Doellgast examines a workplace that exemplifies these trends, the call center. Her intensive study...

This book will reorient the discussion not only of business interests, but of the welfare state and social democracy, for it explains not only the rise of peak associations, but their support for welfare state measures today. Martin and Swank explain American exceptionalism as well as any book...

In 2000, Nancy Plankey-Videla began an ethnography at a high-end men’s suit factory in central Mexico. Three months later, reacting to layoffs, bonus cuts, and an effort to break the union contract, which managers blamed on global competition and the U.S. recession, the largely female...

Corporations have implemented a wide range of equal opportunity and diversity programs since the 1960s. This chapter reviews studies of the origins of these programs, surveys that assess the popularity of different programs, and research on the effects of programs on the workforce. Human...

This edited volume is the outcome of a long collaboration among its nine contributors, who participated in a two-year workshop at the University of Wisconsin organized by Rogers Hollingsworth and Leon Lindberg. It is surprisingly coherent for an edited collection, in part because the authors...