Network K: Institutional Experimentation in the Regulation of Work and Employment
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.
Network K Organizers
Isabelle Ferreras
Dalia Gesualdi-Fecteau
María González
Gregor Murray
Nicolas Roby
Valeria Pulignano
Amanda Coles
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.
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.
KU Leuven
Valeria Pulignano
Valeria Pulignano is Professor of Sociology and Francqui Research Professor of Sociology at the Centre for Sociological Research (CESO) at KU Leuven (Belgium), and member of the LeuvenAI Institute (KU Leuven). He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and a scholarly background in socio-economic studies. She is Coordinator of the RN17 Work, Employment and Industrial Relations at the European Sociological Association (ESA), Co-Researcher at the Inter-University Research Centre on Globalization and Work (CRIMT), Associate Fellow at DIGIT ESRC Essex-Leeds, Weizenbaum Distinguished Fellow (Berlin) and R esearch Fellow at IRRU Warwick University and LISER (Luxemburg). Valeria serves as Associate Editor of Work, Employment and Society and Journal of Industrial Relations. Valeria’s research lies in work, employment (industrial) relations and labor markets, their changing nature, and implications for voice at work and inequality as differences in wages, working conditions, job quality, precarity and wellbeing comparing across different sectors and national settings. She is Winner of the James G. Scoville Award 2015 from LERA and she holds a Chair Jacques Leclerq at UCL. Her last book is on The Politics of Unpaid Labour. How can Unpaid Labour help to address inequality in Precarious Work (Oxford University Press with M. Domecka). Among her recent books Shifting Solidarities. (2020, Palgrave-MacMillan) with I. Van Hoyweghen and G. Meyers; Reconstructing Solidarity (2018, Oxford University Press) with V. Doellgast and N. Lillie.
Deakin University
Amanda Coles
SASE Networks
A: Community, Democracy, and Organizations
This network focuses on the moral or values-based underpinnings of human thought, practices, and institutions that comprise civil societies, particularly as they relate to the participatory, collectivist, and democratic aspirations of organizations, markets, and other spaces of collaboration and contestation.
B: Globalization and Socio-Economic Development
This network considers how, at a time of a polycrisis, domestic, transnational, and international institutions and markets influence the contours of developmental opportunities in the global economy and beyond.
C: Gender, Work & Family
This network focuses on exploring the current state, and the changes in institutions concerned with gender and family roles and workplace organization.
D: Professions and Expertise
Through the Professions and expertise network we seek to develop critical analysis of the dynamics of professions and expertise.
E: Comparative Capitalisms
The aim of this network is to advance research on changing labor markets, industrial relations, and systems of social protection within the study of contemporary capitalisms.
F: KITE: Knowledge, Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship
This network focuses on innovation and entrepreneurship as well as its underlying technologies and knowledge sources. On these topics, we particularly welcome, but do not require an institutional perspective.
G: Labor Markets, Education, and Human Resources
The network welcomes contributions on the general issues of labor market segmentation, unemployment, and the link between training, skills and jobs.
H: Markets, Firms and Institutions
This network focuses on the interrelationships between markets, firms, and institutions.
I: Alternatives to Capitalism
The broad aim of this research network is to advance the international, comparative and interdisciplinary study of alternatives to capitalism.
J: Digital Economy
Digital technologies are contributing to radical, growing and unpredictable transformations of economic life, raising a broad range of new issues for scholars of the economy. This research network is dedicated to the study of these issues.
K: Institutional Experimentation in the Regulation of Work and Employment
This network focuses on making work better through actor experimentation with institutions to regulate work.
L: Regulation and Governance
This network promotes the interdisciplinary study of regulation and governance at national and global levels.
M: Spanish Language
A lively Spanish-speaking section that was established in 2011.
N: Finance and Society
The goal of this network is to promote cross-disciplinary dialogue on the study of finance and include perspectives from social sciences outside of economics.
O: Global Value Chains
This network aims to bring together social scientists interested in analyzing the causes and consequences of this offshoring-outsourcing phenomenon.
P: Accounting, Economics, and Law
This network focuses on the intersection of accounting, economics and law. Institutional design, rules and social norms are critical to the working of organizations in economy and society.
Q: Asian Capitalisms
The basic idea of this first area network within SASE is to make Asia a central field of investigation for theories of institutional change and diversity of capitalism.
R: Islamic Moral Economy and Finance
This network aims at bringing scholars and practitioners together to consider and discuss the role of Islamic moral economy and Islamic finance in achieving its stated ideals by highlighting the tension areas as well as the dynamism observed in the practice of Islamic finance.
S: Environment and Climate Change
This Network aspires to advance a broad, interdisciplinary, and critical dialogue on the interactions between the economy, society, and the environment.
T: Health
This network focuses on the social scientific study of health, broadly defined. It explores four key areas: the embeddedness of health within broader economic, political, and social structures and systems, health equality and equity, organizing and the organization of health, and pricing and valuation of health. The network aims to foster an interdisciplinary community and promote cross-national comparisons in global health, including but not limited to studies about drugs, medicines, healthcare, community and public health, and health policy.
U: Postcolonialism and Legacies of Empire
This network is devoted to engaging the connections between imperialism, colonialism, racism, slavery, and capitalist expansion and global socio-economic development.
V: Geoeconomics
This network explores empirical and theoretical puzzles at the intersection of geopolitics, international political economy, and national capitalist systems in an era of ongoing global transformation. It brings together scholars studying how intensifying rivalries, shifting power relations, and geoeconomic competition reshape state strategies, growth models, welfare regimes, and global production networks (and vice versa).
W: Elites and Power Structures
This network examines how economic, political, and cultural elites shape contemporary socio-economic systems. It brings together scholars exploring elite formation, power, and networks, and their influence on inequality, institutions, markets, and social change through comparative and interdisciplinary research.