K: Institutional Experimentation in the Regulation of Work and Employment

Network K accepts 500-word abstracts (deadline December 16 2024) for the 2025 SASE conference in Montreal (9-12 July 2025). Network K will organize one hybrid session during the conference.

Submissions can be made through the usual process, details here: https://sase.org/event/2025-montreal/#submission-guidelines

Call for papers

This network focuses on making work better through actor experimentation with institutions to regulate work. Major fault lines of change are affecting how people experience work, participate in their communities and live their lives. Digital transformations, changes in the role of the state, the unbundling of firms, the growth of global production networks, transitions to sustainable development, and shifts in identity, solidarity and values are all transforming work. Institutions for the regulation of work seem out of synch with people’s experience. Whereas there is an aspiration for productive, innovative, healthy and inclusive work, in which individuals live free from excessive insecurity, exercise control over their working lives, and contribute to their workplace and society – what can be labelled better work in the broadest sense – a different picture of fragmented work and disjointed communities emerges from current changes. Yet, these changes also open up space for experimentation. At many levels, in different national, institutional and organizational contexts, and in conditions of uncertainty, collective actors (firms, governments, trade unions, NGOs, community organizations) seek to engage in institutional experimentation to shape their work, economies and communities. This network welcomes research that contributes to our understanding of these processes.

RMIT University

Peter Fairbrother

Peter Fairbrother is a professor of International Employment Relations at RMIT University. He is also a core researcher at the Interuniversity Research Centre on Globalization and Work (CRIMT). He has researched and published widely on trade union renewal, industrial restructuring and regeneration and the privatisation and reorganisation of public services and utilities. His recent work focuses on the mobilisation of labour in relation to the social and political transition towards low carbon economies. He has published ten books and numerous articles and book chapters.

Université catholique de Louvain

Isabelle Ferreras

Isabelle Ferreras is a tenured fellow (Checheur qualifié) of the Belgian National Science Foundation (F.N.R.S., Brussels). She is a professor of sociology at the Université catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) where she teaches at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, at the Institut des sciences du travail and at the Economics School of Louvain. Isabelle is involved as a permanent researcher of the CriDIS (Centre de recherches interdisciplinaires Democracy, Institutions, Subjectivity). Since 2004, she has been an associate of the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School (Cambridge, MA) where she is now a Senior Research Associate.

Université de Montréal

Dalia Gesualdi-Fecteau

Dalia Gesualdi-Fecteau is a full professor at the School of Industrial Relations at the Université de Montréal (Canada) and a co-researcher at the Interuniversity Research Centre on Globalization and Work (CRIMT). Her research takes a socio-legal approach to examine the theoretical and practical challenges surrounding the effectiveness of labour law. Dalia’s most recent publications empirically document the experiences of various groups of precarious workers and highlight the strategies employed by labour inspectorates. She has conducted extensive fieldwork and is frequently consulted by civil society groups, unions, and policymakers.

University of Oviedo

María González

María C. González Menéndez is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Oviedo, Spain. Her active research interests include workers’ participation, gender and employment, labour management, and the role of sub-national socioeconomic governance systems in the attraction and retention of multinational firms. These interests are united by a strong internationally comparative focus on the role of social and political institutions in shaping the quality of work and employment. Recent publications include the book Women on Corporate Boards and in Top Management. European Trends and Policy (Palgrave, 2012), co-edited with Colette Fagan and Silvia Gómez, and the handbook on HRM in Spain Gestión de Recursos Humanos: Contexto y Políticas (Thomson-Civitas, 2011), co-edited with Rodolfo Gutiérrez and Miguel Martínez Lucio. She is currently co-leader of the work package on Policy Transfer and Comparative Frameworks within the large scale FP7 project Strategic Transitions for Youth Labour in Europe.

HEC Montréal / Interuniversity Research Centre on Globalization and Work (CRIMT)

Christian Lévesque

Christian Lévesque is a professor of Employment Relations at HEC Montréal, Co-director of the Interuniversity Research Centre on Globalization and Work (CRIMT) and has a professorship in employment relations and institutional innovation. His research focus concerns the impact of globalisation on trade unions, employment practices in multinational corporations and union-management relations. He has done extensive fieldwork in various parts of the world, including México, various countries in Europe, Ghana and China. He has published on trade union renewal, comparative employment practices in multinational corporations and transnational union action. He has co-edited two books and seven special journal issues and published numerous articles and book chapters.

University of Montreal (ERIUM) / Interuniversity Research Centre on Globalization and Work (CRIMT)

Gregor Murray

Gregor Murray holds the Canada Research Chair on Globalization and Work in the School of Industrial Relations at the University of Montreal (ERIUM). He is also director of the Interuniversity Research Centre on Globalization and Work (CRIMT), which is an interdisciplinary centre linking researchers in a variety of universities and research institutes to a research program on the theoretical and practical challenges of actor and institutional renewal for the regulation of work and employment. Gregor’s particular research interests include international comparisons of employment relations, human resource practices, labour law and subsidiary embeddedness in multinational companies. He also works on union capacity and innovation, with a particular focus on the comparative analysis of workplace unions.

Interuniversity Research Centre on Globalization and Work (CRIMT)

Nicolas Roby

Nicolas Roby is a scientific coordinator for the Interuniversity Research Centre on Globalization and Work (CRIMT). Since 2003, he has participated in the development of the Centre’s scientific programming and activities, as well as establishing and growing its research and dissemination portfolio by coordinating more than thirty international conferences, seminars and publication projects, including two special issues of IR/RI on union renewal and the digitization and regulation of work and employment. His current research interests include the impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) and digitization on work futures, worker wellbeing, social protection systems and institutional legacies. Nicolas holds an MA in industrial relations from Laval University and was enrolled in the University of Warwick’s PhD program from 1996 to 2000. He has taught organizational sociology and labour relations at the Université de Montréal, Université Laval and HEC Montréal, and consulted for government agencies, sectoral labour committees, trade unions and other research centres.