This paper critically examines management's recruitment of temporary labour at three U.S. electronics firms operating in the Republic of Ireland. Recent discussions around the flexible firm and human resource management models would suggest that the recruitment of a secondary labour force is a strategic and advantageous practice. This paper is critical of these assumptions. It was found that management's reliance on temporary employees gave rise to a number of contradictions and tensions, and in the end was considered to be disadvantageous. This paper is also critical of the flexibility literature's neglect of employees' response to these initiatives. This paper corrects this shortcoming. The counterposing of `flexibility' and `rigidity' as opposites is also criticised.

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Whether all parties to the employment relationship benefit from workplace partnership and with what consequences is one of the most persistent research questions in industrial relations scholarship. Three dominant theoretical frameworks are identified. They are the mutual gains, pessimistic and constrained mutuality perspectives. Using both quantitative and qualitative case study data, the article queries the prevailing view that it is possible to categorize partnership outcomes as fitting neatly into one of these three theoretical perspectives. The article investigates the critical role of employees' perceptions of the distribution of partnership gains for their orientation to their employer and union, and in regard to their support for a continuation of a partnership approach.

This study examines the transfer of a Brazilian MNC's HR model to its subsidiaries in the UK, Canada, Switzerland and Norway. It explores where the model was sourced from, to what extent it bore a distinct Brazilian complexion, and whether it was adapted to meet the strictures of host institutional constraints and traditions. The paper uses these questions to address an important theoretical debate in the international business literature; that is, whether the pattern of diffusion of management practices within MNCs will lead to a convergence of practices across companies and countries à la the convergence perspective, or whether this is unlikely given the variety of social and political constraints limiting such a process as suggested by the contingency perspective. We find that the MNC imposed a unitary (USsourced) model of HR 'best practice' on all of its subsidiaries. Thus our empirical findings support the convergence thesis. However, we argue that these outcomes are largely explained by relations of power and economic dependence; specifically the coexistence of dominantcountry (US) practices and a dominant sectoral firm operating in economically dependent regions. Where similar circumstances are replicated one might foresee convergence within sectors across countries, but otherwise pluralism and eclecticism between sectors and across countries might be the predominant pattern along the lines envisaged in the conceptualization of "converging divergences".

This article examines the introduction of teamworking in the pharmaceutical industry. It was found that the organisation of work contained a mix of benefits and costs. The balance between the two was not random; employees' response was influenced by and connected to prior experiences and expectations, management's business strategies and approach to industrial relations and HRM. The article argues that there was a new dynamic, but one cast within the familiar terrain of management seeking to maintain control and generate consent.