Employment Relations across Organizational Boundaries

Most academic studies of employment relations still operate within a framework which assumes that the single employer-employee relationship is the norm. This is hardly surprising given traditional definitions of the subject, even by theorists as diametrically opposed as Clegg (1970) and Hyman (1975). Moreover, historically, the majority of workers were employed in this sort of relationship, where employers had direct, line management authority over them with ultimate power to discipline or sack workers who did not comply with their wishes. The idea that one employer (say, a client), in a supply chain or partnership, could shape employment relations at the site of another employer (say, a supplier) is usually not addressed directly in existing theoretical approaches but instead is regarded as part of the context within which employer-employee relationships take place.