Cardiff Business School

22nd Employment Research Unit (ERU)

Annual Conference

Varieties of Capitalism: Organisational, Management

and Human Resource Implications

An International Conference

17 & 18 September 2007

CALL FOR PAPERS

There has been a growing interest across academic disciplines, in the economics and the social sciences literature, on the nature and extent of diverse, national and pan-national, forms of capitalism, on institutional diversity and the strengths and weaknesses of these forms.  Much of this literature was an attempt to explain any why certain economies were flourishing under different forms of capitalism from the US-model, notably Germany, Japan and more recently other east Asian economies.  Different approaches were developed from political economy, economic sociology and management perspectives.

However, when this literature was at its zenith, doubts as to the continued viability of divergent capitalisms emerged with conditions of growing global economic integration and the economic travails of two major, varieties of capitalism, namely Japan and Germany.  Would, for example, these varieties of capitalism face pressures to converge towards a dominant, hegemonic, US model?

This conference aims to answer these questions from a variety of perspectives, namely organisational, management and HR ones.  Submissions that address one of the following broad topics and themes are encouraged.

• Organisational.  To what extent are new organisational forms emerging at the national level, and to what extent are these being replicated, or otherwise, across varieties of capitalism?  Are such forms found in public sector organisations?
• Management.  What are the management implications of possible convergence pressures and new organisational forms?  What new management systems are emerging and what are the experiences of managers in such new environments?
• Human Resource.  Are employment relations systems under pressure to converge to a US-style market system?  For example, do internal labour markets face an uncertain future, what are the implications for seniority based systems, what are the implications for job security and careers?  What are the employee experiences of change and those of organised labour?  Are there specific gender implications?

The conference welcomes theoretical and empirical contributions with, regarding the latter, single national and cross-national comparisons, involving those from emerging and transitional economies.

Conference Fees

£170 for the two day conference including all meals and a conference dinner at Cardiff's Hilton Hotel, plus conference papers.  Accommodation not included.

Submission Process

Abstracts of 1000 words should be submitted to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it by 30 April 2007.  Notification of acceptance of papers will be given by 30 May 2007.  The deadline for full papers will be 31 July 2007.

Further details are available from Jonathan Morris ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ) or Julie Roberts, conference administrator ( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ).

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