This book examines how businesses manage their labour systems, and particularly how they manage the complex interaction of 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 a new and extensive set of empirical data from Australia that examines the activities of national and multinational business corporations, 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.

This book 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 capital and labour within businesses. In pursuing this task, the book draws upon a new and 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 two new and evolving theoretical frameworks based in political economy and law.

'This is an incisive analysis of the diverse ways that corporations mediate the impact on workers of recent changes in market competition. It is grounded in empirical reality via case studies of corporate governance in Australian companies and surveys of their directors. Theorists who emphasize national institutions, including legal systems, cannot explain why some companies treat their employees as assets and others as commodities. That's why this book is so important.' Sanford M. Jacoby, University of California, Los Angeles, USA 'Law, Corporate Governance and Partnerships at Work makes a fundamental contribution to the understanding of the role of the legal system in shaping corporate governance and workplace relations. It combines a wide-ranging theoretical inquiry with closely-focused empirical work which reveals the dynamics at play in this area of contemporary capitalism, as highlighted by the Australian case.' Simon Deakin, University of Cambridge, UK 'Drawing on the results of an extensive five-year research project, the authors empirically test a range of possible dependencies, and convincingly demonstrate the degree of heterogeneity which characterises different phenomena the law may seek to regulate.' Industrial Law Journal