An edited book in the Critical Perspectives on Work and Employment series associated with the annual International Labour Process Conference. The book focuses on comparative work and employment relations research conducted within a broader political economy framework. Written by leading academics, it contains cutting-edge research.

Marco Hauptmeier is Senior Lecturer of Comparative Employment Relations at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, UK. He holds a PhD from Cornell University, where he studied comparative employment relations and comparative political economy. Beyond these fields of studies, his research interests also include institutional theory and the role of ideologies at work. His articles have been published in Human Relations, Industrial Relations (Berkeley), the British Journal of Industrial Relations and the European Journal of Industrial Relations. He is the co-winner of the 2009 Thomas A. Kochan and Stephen R. Sleigh Best Dissertation Award, which recognized the best PhD thesis in employment relations in the USA. Marco has co-edited special issues with leading academic journals. He has co-edited a special issue of Human Relations on 'Beyond the Enterprise: Widening the Horizons on International HRM' and a special issue of the International Journal of Human Resource Management on 'Ideas at Work: The Social Construction of Employment Relations'.

Matt Vidal is Senior Lecturer in Work and Organizations in the Department of Management, King's College London, UK. Matt is on the editorial board of Work, Employment and Society, Co-Editor of the 'Organisations and Work' section of Sociology Compass, and Chief Editor of the blog for the Organizations, Occupations and Work section of the American Sociological Association. His research focuses on manufacturing work organization, low-wage work and labour markets, comparative political economy, and social theory. Matt's publications include 'On the Persistence of Labor Market Insecurity and Slow Growth in the US: Reckoning with the Waltonist Growth Regime', New Political Economy (forthcoming); 'Reworking Postfordism: Labor Process versus Employment Relations', Sociology Compass (2011); 'Temporary Employment and Strategic Staffing in the Manufacturing Sector', Industrial Relations (2009, with Leann M. Tigges); 'Routine Inefficiency: Operational Satisficing and Real-World Markets' in Research in the Sociology of Work (2009, JAI/Elsevier); 'Manufacturing Empowerment? Employee Involvement in the Labor Process after Fordism', Socio-Economic Review (2007); and 'Lean Production, Worker Empowerment, and Job Satisfaction: A Qualitative Analysis and Critique', Critical Sociology (2007). Matt is currently co-editing a special issue on Marxist approaches to organizational analysis for Organization Studies.