Between Fragmentation and Centralization: South Korean Industrial Relations in Transition

Lee, Joohee

doi:10.1111/j.1467-8543.2011.00876.x

Cited by 19 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…According to the Korean Contingent Workers' Center, there were more than 8.5 million non-standard workers in 2009, accounting for approximately 52 per cent of all wage-earners. While nonstandard workers earned 53.5 per cent of the average monthly wage of regular workers in August 2000, they earned just 46.8 per cent in March 2010 (Korean Contingent Workers' Center, 2010;Lee, 2011). 8 Interview with a research fellow in the Korea Labour Institute on 16 th December 2016.…”

Section: Collective Labour Pushes Backmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptualising contemporary retail divestment: Tesco's departure from South Korea

2017

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In this article, we critically analyse UK retailer, Tesco's September 2015 decision to sell its highly profitable South Korean subsidiary Homeplus to private investors. For over a decade since market entry in 1999, Homeplus had grown steadily to achieve a market-leading position through a process of strategic localization in which Tesco's global business practices were selectively adapted to meet the specific needs of the South Korean market. Against this backdrop, we explain the exit decision through theorising the dynamic intersection of home and host market factors that developed contemporaneously from 2010 onwards. On the one hand, worsening market conditions and financial pressures in a post-crisis UK domestic market drove Tesco to refocus on its home operations and, ultimately, identify saleable assets to offset mounting debts. On the other hand, steadily growing resistance within the South Korean market from competitors, regulators, labour and consumers caused sales growth to stall and then start to decline. Our analysis contributes to the economic geography literature on retail divestment by conceptualising the relational process of divestment decision-making that encompasses the intersection of home and host market pressures as well as conditions across the wider portfolio of subsidiaries. The research is particularly distinctive in its profiling of this coevolution of drivers, and in distilling the different 'domains' of host market contestation. The analysis also has wider significance in the context of the broader literatures on economic globalization that have tended to focus heavily on processes of expansion and market entry and far less on the instances of failure and exit that are an integral and inevitable part of these wider dynamics.

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Section: Collective Labour Pushes Backmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptualising contemporary retail divestment: Tesco's departure from South Korea

2017

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“…Both union confederations, which were bitter rivals, called out together a general strike, which brought the country to a standstill for a month. In an unprecedented manner, the government had to postpone the implementation of labour market reform, opening up the possibility of policy reversal by the next government (Koo 2000;Lee 2011b).…”

Section: Protecting Insiders: Trade Unions and Democratisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Organised Labour, Dualisation and Labour Market Reform: Korean Trade Union Strategies in Economic and Social Crisis

Fleckenstein

Lee

2018

Journal of Contemporary Asia

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“…An amendment made to the Labour Standard Act in 1996 removed rigid rules and legislation governing labour markets (Lee, 2011). There had been significant growth in the temporary employment of salaried workers, from 26.8% in 2003 to 34.9% in 2010.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The South Korean Congress wrote the Temporary Employment Protection Act (TEPA) in 2007 to protect the welfare of these temporary employees. According to the TEPA, a temporary employment period must generally be limited to two years, after which employers are required to make temporary workers permanent (Lee, 2011). Furthermore, temporary employees are entitled to working conditions, compensation, and benefits equivalent to those enjoyed by permanent workers, as long as the nature of the job is similar to that of its permanent counterpart.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, temporary employees are entitled to working conditions, compensation, and benefits equivalent to those enjoyed by permanent workers, as long as the nature of the job is similar to that of its permanent counterpart. However, a significant number of companies have evaded TEPA's regulations by using outsourcing services and replacing existing temporary employees with new ones rather than making the existing temporary employees permanent (Lee, 2011). to permanent employment in korea Employment relationships can be viewed as a balancing of competing interests among company stakeholders (Budd, Gomez, and Meltz, 2004).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Relationship between the Internal Labour Market and Transitions from Temporary to Permanent Employment in Korea

Kim

Lee

2014

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Résumé de l'articleDurant la dernière décennie, les entreprises coréennes ont connu une hausse significative de leur proportion d'emplois temporaires dans leur emploi total. Le gouvernement coréen a adopté la Loi sur la protection de l'emploi temporaire afin de ralentir le recours à cette forme d'emploi. Les employeurs coréens font face au dilemme suivant : favoriser les transitions d'emplois temporaires vers des emplois permanents ou externaliser ou encore sous-contracter certains services. Le but de cette étude est d'explorer les marchés internes du travail et de chercher à savoir pourquoi des entreprises sont disposées à transformer des emplois temporaires en emplois permanents. Par contre, face à la volatilité des marchés, les entreprises auront tendance à accroître le nombre de leurs travailleurs temporaires pour être en mesure d'ajuster plus facilement le nombre et le type de ressources humaines, plutôt que de construire et établir des marchés internes du travail (MIT) en leur sein. En se penchant sur les interrelations entre les MIT, le dynamisme de l'environnement et les transitions d'emplois de statut temporaire à permanent, notre étude cherche à cerner les caractéristiques des MIT eu égard aux prises de décisions en matière d'emploi. Les résultats statistiques de l'étude montrent que certains éléments structurels des MIT facilitent les transitions d'emplois temporaires vers des emplois permanents. Parmi les MIT, seuls ceux comportant des régimes de rémunération basés sur l'ancienneté ont affiché une réduction du nombre d'employés permanents à la suite de conversions d'emplois temporaires en emplois permanents après que les entreprises eurent connus des changements dynamiques dans leur environnement. L'effet des MIT sur les décisions des employeurs de favoriser les transitions d'emplois temporaires vers des emplois permanents se fait davantage sentir après quelques années suivant l'adoption de changements dans les lois et règlements sur le travail temporaire.Cette étude montre que les caractéristiques d'un système d'emploi influent sur les décisions des entreprises dans le choix entre emplois temporaires et emplois permanents. Les MIT configurent et établissent des normes organisationnelles et des traditions culturelles qui à leur tour déterminent les structures d'emplois. De plus, les contextes institutionnels influent aussi sur les décisions des entreprises de favoriser l'une ou l'autre forme d'emploi. Les études à venir sur le sujet devraient mettre davantage l'accent sur les systèmes d'emplois dans la détermination du capital humain des entreprises. This study examines the relationship between internal labour markets (ILMs) and the transition from temporary to permanent employment, particularly following the legislative changes regarding the use of temporary workers in Korea. We test our research model based on data gathered during two different periods from 619 and 616 Korean companies respectively. The results show that ILMs help companies turn temporary employees into permanent ones. Furthermore,...

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Between Fragmentation and Centralization: South Korean Industrial Relations in Transition

Abstract: This study investigates profound changes in South

Cited by 19 publications

References 13 publications

Conceptualising contemporary retail divestment: Tesco's departure from South Korea

Conceptualising contemporary retail divestment: Tesco's departure from South Korea

Organised Labour, Dualisation and Labour Market Reform: Korean Trade Union Strategies in Economic and Social Crisis

The Relationship between the Internal Labour Market and Transitions from Temporary to Permanent Employment in Korea

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