International Human Resource Management

Nowadays, internationalization is key for the survival of firms. Internationalization of a firm involves an internationalization of all the functional areas of the firm, of which international human resource management (IHRM) is one of the most relevant. In an international context, managers should make decisions about what human resource practices are best suited to the firm's international operations. Being aware of the differences between domestic and international human resource management will help readers and managers to establish operational mechanisms to deal with country differences in terms of industrial labor, culture, and firm practices. Therefore, after reading this chapter, readers should be able to deal with aspects like adaptation or standardization of HR practices, international staffing, and relevant issues around expatriation and repatriation.

The problem of defining the women’s status in sugar-refining industry: “woman” – “half-worker” – “worker” (on an example of sugar factories of Kyiv province, 1880s–1900s)

This article regards the problem of defining the women’s status in the sugar-refining industry of the Russia Empire post-reform period. Based on the cases of sugar factories of Kyiv province during the 1880s–1905s, the author illustrates a complicated process of determining the role and the place of female laborers in the professional structure of industrial institutions which relate to this type of industry. Due to the fact that women had been recruited to unqualified parts of the working class (in the majority of cases), they remained at the bottom of the hierarchy of industrial labor. In contrast to men-laborers, who were distributed by the qualification parameter and professional skill (qualified/unqualified labor force), women-laborers were distributed by the gender parameter. Based on the archival materials of the factory inspection funds and in-factory documentation, it was found that working women were most often identified into the category “women” (“zhenschina”), less often as “part-time workers” (“polurabochaya”), and even less often as “workers” (“rabochaya”). It is possible to say that such division differed significantly from the distribution among the male part of the working class (“rabochiy/polurabo- chiy”). After all, a woman working in an industrial space was generally perceived not as a full-fledged unit of labor but as a supplement to qualified male labor. However, the model proposed by the author of this study: “woman” – “semi-worker” – “worker”, opened a different angle, according to which a woman’s professional position was not clearly fixed and could de facto change, regardless of the type of the performed work (qualified or unqualified). As a result, all these sources and evidence allow us to state that the period of industrialization and modernization provided for women (though not significant) a space for opportunities to realize their own work.

Defending the “Peace of Sunday”: The Debate over Sunday Labor in the West German Steel Industry after the Second World War

Working hours were largely unregulated in nineteenth-century Germany, but a powerful alliance emerged in the 1890s between the Christian churches and the socialist labor movement to prohibit most industrial labor on Sunday, including most production of steel. In the 1950s steel management persuaded organized labor that it would be advantageous to produce steel continuously throughout the week, the prevalent system in other countries. The Evangelical Church retreated in this debate, but the Catholic Church waged a fierce and partly successful campaign from 1952 to 1961 to defend the old prohibition. Until the 1980s organized labor continued to cooperate with both major churches to keep Sunday industrial labor quite rare. Their influence declined suddenly after national reunification in 1990, however, and many Germans have come to prize individual freedom above the old principle, honored by Christians and the unchurched alike, that most people should have the same day of rest.

Dispossession and Party Formation in Broader Comparative Perspective

This chapter shows that rather than emerging from a ready-formed cohesive industrial labor movement, these parties’ original constituency was the demoted artisan and peasantry in transition to be, but not yet, proletarianized. Second, in a related way, the chapter shows that the period of party emergence followed a process of economic and political dispossession: these parties articulated new political subjectivities in the context of eroding traditional economic and political structures. The differences in the timing of party emergence between the countries lie precisely in how these processes of dispossession developed: in Germany, the process of economic dispossession coincided with a political dispossession setting the terrain for the mass-party form, while in the British case, economic dispossession was not initially accompanied by political dispossession of the working classes, who maintained a degree of self-presentational authority, particularly in the form of “friendly societies.”

Industrial Agglomeration and Carbon Neutrality in China: Lessons and Evidence

How does the agglomeration economy affect carbon emissions? Does it hinder China's zero-carbon emissions and carbon neutral goals? This study explored the impact of industrial agglomeration on carbon emissions and spatial spillover effects by expanding the output density theoretical model of Ciccone & Hall. The main findings are as follows: (1) Industrial labor and technology agglomerations increase regional carbon emissions, while industrial output agglomeration reduces emissions in the immediate term. Industrial capital agglomeration has no significant immediate effect on carbon emission. (2) Industrial output and technology agglomerations have significant lag effects. Output agglomeration increases carbon emissions, while technology agglomeration reduces emission levels. (3) The impact of industrial output agglomeration on regional carbon emissions shifts from a positive inhibitory effect into a negative aggravating effect. In comparison, industrial technology agglomeration transitions from increasing carbon emissions in the immediate term into having a suppressing effect in the long term. (4) There are significant regional differences in the impact of industrial output and capital agglomerations, while industrial labor and technology agglomerations showed no significant regional difference. The results are important in developing policies and strategies of the economy and the environment.

Agglomeration and Innovation: An Empirical Study Based on China’s Manufacturing Data

This study explores the relationship between spatial agglomeration and innovation, taking Chinese manufacturing data as an example. Tractable model is built to explain the mechanism through which spatial concentration of firms in a city affects industrial innovation. Then in the empirical analysis, new agglomeration and innovation indicators are used to test the theoretical conclusions at the city-industry level. Results show that the geographical concentration of firms has significant negative effects on industrial innovation and growth. These overall effects can be divided into positive and negative categories after considering the interaction between the industrial labor scale and firm’s spatial agglomeration. Industries with a higher labor scale will bear more crowding effects of firms’ spatial agglomeration. These findings mean that moving to a less concentrated area might be a good choice for the labor-intensive firms which aim at innovation.

HANDICRAFT PRODUCTION IN DAGESTAN: THE CULTURE OF EVERYDAY LIFE (THE FIRST HALF OF THE XX CENTURY)

The article deals with some aspects of the daily life of Dagestani artisans of the first twenty years of the XX century. Issues of industrial labor and life of artisans are reflected in official documents of the Republican party bodies, and in the materials of the Dagestan handicraft Union. The purpose of the research is to identify traditions and innovations in the daily work and life of Dagestani artisans at the turn of two different historical epochs. When writing the article, we used documentary sources of the Central state archive of the Republic of Dagestan, materials of the periodical press, which allowed us to conduct a comparative analysis of three levels of everyday life of artisans: the traditional, revolutionary period and the formation of the Soviet way of life. During the study period, the reorganization of handicraft production was carried out, which was associated with certain difficulties and costs.

The Mom and the Many: Animal Subplots and Vulnerable Characters in Ducks, Newburyport

This article examines Lucy Ellmann's encyclopedic novel Ducks, Newburyport (2019) in the context of debates on modernist legacies, animal characters, and climate fiction. It pays particular attention to the text's signature strategy of including anecdotes about nonhuman creatures exposed to distinct forms of violence, anecdotes that reveal the concerns of the human narrator and her daughter but also highlight other animals, their unfamiliar phenomenologies, and their cautious cross-species partnerships. More specifically, the article tracks individual animals across the novel's pages and reconstructs their semiautonomous subplots as they unfold in a world characterized by animal cruelty, species extinction, and industrial labor. By forcing us to consider the perspectives of creatures like Jim, Mishipeshu, Audrey, and Gracia, Ellmann's narrative reminds us that the climate emergency does not just destabilize a shared geological environment but also endangers multiple and heterogeneous biological worlds.