Prof David Marsden NAB4.22

This course is available on the MSc in International Employment Relations and Human Resource Management, MSc in Management, MSc in Management (CEMS MIM), MSc in Management and Human Resources and MSc in Management, Organisations and Governance. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

The course deals with the policies that organisations adopt to deal with a range of human resource issues, and develops an international and comparative perspective. The course considers managerial human resource policies in their institutional, social and market contexts in advanced industrial countries. As an integrating perspective, the lectures analyse how different employment systems shape organisations' HR strategies and policies. The course looks at problems of human resource management in international firms, training, migration, knowledge management, rewards, equal opportunities, employment flexibility, participation, and employer collective action all within the context of different types of employment systems.

20 hours of lectures and 13 hours and 30 minutes of seminars in the LT. 4 hours of lectures and 3 hours of seminars in the ST.

Students are expected to read widely in the appropriate journals; a detailed reading list will be provided at the start of the course. Some useful texts include: D W Marsden, A Theory of Employment Systems: microfoundations of societal diversity, Oxford University Press, 1999; Briscoe D. S Schuler R. (2004 & 2008) International human resource management, Routledge, London; J Baron & D Kreps, Strategic Human Resources: frameworks for general managers, Wiley, New York, 1999; C Crouch, D Finegold & M Sako, Are Skills the Answer? The political economy of skill creation in advanced industrial societies, Oxford University Press, 1999; K Koike, Human resource development; Japanese Economy & Labor Series, No 2, Japan Institute of Labor, Tokyo, 1997; A-W Harzing & J van Ruysseveldt (Eds), International Human Resource Management, 2004; D Rousseau & R Schalk (Eds), Psychological Contracts in Employment: cross-national perspectives, Sage, 2000; J Rubery & D Grimshaw, The Organization of Employment: an international perspective, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke; Katherine Stone, From Widgets to Digits: Employment Regulation for the Changing Workplace, Cambridge University Press, 2004; P. DiMaggio (2001) The Twenty-first Century Firm: Changing Economic Organisation in International Perspective, Princeton; International Journal of Human Resource management, 14: 8, Dec 2003, Special Issue: Developments in Comparative Human Resource Management.

Exam (67%, duration: 2 hours) in the main exam period.
Essay (33%) in the LT.
Students complete an assessed essay during the Easter vacation, which counts for one third of their assessment, and a summer examination, which counts for two thirds.