Chris Rees

Chris Rees
Royal Holloway University of London | RHUL · School of Management

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70
Publications
152,329
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2,449
Citations

Publications

Publications (70)
Article
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This article draws upon the disconnected capitalism thesis (DCT) to analyse UK takeovers and their implications for workers. The DCT refers to the disconnect between the source of value creation (the labour process) and the wider political economy. Specifically, we highlight a particular aspect of this disconnect whereby those who create value and...
Article
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The current model of corporate governance needs reform. There is mounting evidence that the practices of shareholder primacy drive company directors and executives to adopt the same short time horizon as financial markets. Pressure to meet the demands of the financial markets drives stock buybacks, excessive dividends and a failure to invest in pro...
Article
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This article evaluates the provisions for information disclosure to employees contained in the UK Takeover Code, following the implementation of the Directive on Takeover Bids (2004/25/EC) in 2006 and further amendments resulting from the Kraft/Cadbury takeover in 2010, among other developments. It contrasts information and consultation (I&C) provi...
Article
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This article argues that critical realism (CR) offers an ontological position suited to understanding the dynamic relations between multinational companies (MNCs) and the complex political spaces within which they operate. After outlining the core assumptions of CR, the key arguments are elaborated through two case studies which focus on issues of...
Book
This engaging textbook offers a readable introduction to International Human Resource Management. It explores the international dimensions of managing human resources, with a focus on comparative HRM and multinational organisations. It tackles the issues raised by cross-national differences in HRM styles and explores key themes, including: - The m...
Article
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Small businesses in developing countries, as part of global supply chains, are sometimes assumed to respond in a straightforward manner to institutional demands for improved working conditions. This article problematizes this perspective. Drawing upon extensive qualitative data from Tirupur’s knitwear export industry in India, we highlight owner-ma...
Article
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The rise of modern corporations has been accompanied by an expansion of salaried executives who have replaced owner-managers. With this expansion, the new class of managers/executives came to regard themselves as stewards of large and complex corporations, and not principally or exclusively as agents for the owners. Emerging as a self- styled ‘prof...
Article
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Drawing upon interview data from three case study organizations, we examine the role of middle managers in UK public service reform. Using theory fragments from organizational ecology and role theory, we develop three role archetypes that middle managers might be enacting. We find that rather than wholesale enactment of a ‘change agent’ role, middl...
Book
Growing interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) has focused attention on the relationship between businesses and key stakeholders, such as NGOs and local communities. Curiously, however, commentators on CSR rarely discuss the role of trade unions, while commentators on employment relations seldom engage with CSR. This situation is all the...
Article
Under successive regimes since the early 1980s, UK governments have called upon line managers to play a pivotal role in the development and enactment of public service reform. However, there is little empirical evidence from line managers themselves showing how the tensions and complexities inherent within modern public service reform agendas are e...
Chapter
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This chapter explains how ethnographic enquiry can be strengthened through recourse to the ontological assumptions of critical realism. It also looks in the opposite direction to consider how critical realist researchers can benefit from utilizing ethnography as a means of initiating the ‘retroductive journey’. The chapter provides a broad overview...
Article
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This article examines the role played by line managers in the link between HRM practices and individual performance outcomes. Drawing on social exchange theory, the authors test a mediated model linking perceived line manager behavior and perceived human resource management practices with employee engagement and individual performance. The study fo...
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This article analyses the operation of European works councils (EWCs) in three multinational companies (GSK, Coca-Cola and UniCredit) across six EU Member States (Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Ireland, Italy and the UK). Based on interviews with EWC members and other employee representatives in these companies, it argues that EWCs are in a process of...
Article
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We theorized that absence from work is a resource-based process that is related to perceived meaningfulness of work, well-being, and engagement. Broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 1998, 2001) and engagement theory (Bakker, Schaufeli, Leiter, & Taris, 2008; Kahn, 1990) were used to develop a framework for explaining absence. Results of a study o...
Article
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This paper considers the relationship between employee voice and employee engagement. Employee perceptions of voice behaviour aimed at improving the functioning of the work group are found to have both a direct impact and an indirect impact on levels of employee engagement. Analysis of data from two organisations confirms that the direct connection...
Article
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Effective measure of employee engagement is relevant to human resource development (HRD) theory and practice. We build on Kahn's (199036. Kahn , W.A. 1990. Psychological conditions of personal engagement and disengagement at work. Academy of Management Journal, 33: 692–724. [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®]View all references, Psychological condition...
Article
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This article studies the restructuring process following a cross-border merger between two pharmaceutical companies. Mergers and takeovers make a favourable scenario for researching the capacity that multinationals have for disseminating their policies and practices beyond the frontiers of their countries of origin. Four comparable plants in four c...
Article
This article provides a brief summary of some of the main findings from a recent study of Total Quality Management (TQM), carried out by Chris Rees from the School of Human Resource Management at Kingston, together with two colleagues from the Industrial Relations Research Unit at the University of Warwick (Margaret Collinson and Paul Edwards). The...
Article
You may know the five principles for increasing employee engagement: Keep people informed, listen, set clear objectives, match the person with the job, and create meaningful work. Though these tactics provide a good foundation, firms should also tailor engagement programs to reach different types of workers. After studying eight companies with a to...
Article
This two-year research project, from the Kingston Employee Engagement Consortium Project, analysed levels of engagement across eight different organisations. It offers strategies for engagement and insights into the outcomes of engagement.
Article
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The article combines consideration of the range of contextual factors that impact on management strategy and HR in the post-merger period (such as corporate structures and cultures, pressures from shareholders and regulatory and legal environments at national and international level) with an examination of the interests and power of various groups...
Article
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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to highlight employee diversity at the workplace level in a MNC, and consider its impact upon management attempts to promote a global corporate culture. Design/methodology/approach – The investigation took the form of an ethnographic participant‐observation study, which involved interviews and archival resear...
Article
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Este artículo estudia la reestructuración que siguió a la fusión de dos multinacionales del sector farmacéutico. Los procesos de fusión y adquisición constituyen un buen escenario para la investigación de la capacidad de las multinacionales para difundir sus políticas y prácticas más allá de las fronteras de sus países de origen. Se seleccionaron c...
Article
Full-text available
Este artículo estudia la reestructuración que siguió a la fusión de dos multinacionales del sector farmacéutico. Los procesos de fusión y adquisición constituyen un buen escenario para la investigación de la capacidad de las multinacionales para difundir sus políticas y prácticas más allá de las fronteras de sus países de origen. Se seleccionaron c...
Article
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This article examines the restructuring process following a cross-border merger in the pharmaceuticals sector. We show how national industrial relations systems account for some aspects of cross-national differences in the process and outcomes of restructuring. However, we also argue that institutionalist approaches to comparative analysis must be...
Article
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This paper explains varying degrees of employee commitment to organisational change across four organisations. Of the many workplace innovations in recent years, Quality Management (QM) is one of the most common and also, potentially, the most far-reaching. QM is the backdrop for a focus on variations in worker acceptance of change and the actors w...
Article
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The paper challenges the pervasive view that economic internationalisation necessarily undermines national political economies and renders unworkable state action in support of social protection and the social regulation of employment. Whilst it is commonly assumed that globalisation must erase the particularities of the so-called «Swedish model»,...
Article
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Este texto pone en entredicho el punto de vista generalizado de que la internacionalización económica necesariamente socava las políticas económicas nacionales, haciendo inviable la acción estatal en apoyo a la protección social y la reglamentación social del empleo. Aunque sea común suponer que la globalización debe borrar las particularidades del...
Article
The paper challenges the pervasive view that economic internationalisation necessarily undermines national political economies and renders unworkable state action in support of social protection and the social regulation of employment. Whilst it is commonly assumed that globalisation must erase the particularities of the so-called “Swedish model”,...
Article
Full-text available
This article reports employee attitudes towards quality management (QM) at two organisations in the private services sector. It examines the nature and extent of employee involvement in QM through teamworking, describes the methods which managements use to encourage teamworking, and assesses the levels of responsibility and autonomy that teams have...
Article
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This article discusses the diffusion of employment practices across borders in multinational companies (MNCs). Case study data are used to address two central questions: whether all MNCs attempt to engage in diffusion, and how this process occurs. We argue that diffusion is not a universal tendency but is promoted or retarded by such factors as the...
Technical Report
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This paper argues that the diffusion of employment practices across borders in multinational companies (MNCs) is not a universal tendency, but rather is promoted or retarded by the presence or absence of certain structural and environmental factors. Case study data are used to illustrate the importance of some of these factors: notably the nature o...
Article
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Although the sociology of organisations and work increasingly focuses on multinational firms, we still know very little about the impact of the internationalisation of production on the tendency for isomorphism observed in the plants operated by multinational firms. Drawing from a study of three multinational firms, the authors contend that transna...
Article
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Aunque la sociología de las organizaciones y del trabajo se ocupa cada vez más de estudiar las empresas multinacionales, todavía se conoce poco el impacto que la internacionalización de la producción tiene en la tendencia al isomorfismo que se observa en las plantas operadas por multinacionales. Con los resultados del estudio de tres multinacionale...
Article
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En: Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas Madrid 1999, n. 86, abril-junio ; p. 79-94 En este artículo se hace un estudio del impacto que la internacionalización de la producción tiene en la tendencia al isoformismo observado en las plantas operadas por multinacionales. Con los resultados del estudio de tres multinacionales, los autores s...
Article
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Total quality management has been a central element in many efforts directed towards organizational change. Theories tend to fall into two extreme camps, which hold either that TQM transforms attitudes and behaviour or that it is nothing but a means to intensify work and tighten managerial control. More recent analysis is more balanced, but lacks q...
Article
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This paper surveys recent case study evidence addressing the implications of task-based teamworking for front-line employees. It refers primarily to three manufacturing companies in the UK. All three companies faced significant external challenges deriving from increased competition, and in each case teamworking was perceived as a key aspect of org...
Article
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Considers management views on the operation of quality management (QM) strategies in two service sector organizations, one in financial services and the other in hotel & catering. Examines some of the soft/HRM aspects of quality management. Finds that there have been moves towards the more quantifiable measurement of outcomes and tighter management...

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